


Sacrilegious Old Men

by newsbypostcard



Series: From Tralfamadore [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Chronic Illness, Happy Ending, M/M, Past Bucky Barnes/Sam Wilson, Rimming, Sexual Content, background sam wilson/omc, canon-typical life and death situations, past maria hill/natasha romanoff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-12 12:29:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13547355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: "Bucky, every secret mission you go on—every day you leave the house without telling me what's going on—I can't help thinking that today could be the day you don't come back. And when that happens—""The solution to your problem is to have more faith in my abilities, Steve. End of conversation.""Bucky! God!" Steve spits it out, furious. "Sometimes I think this whole thing's just a front for the fact that you want to die in the field!"*(2036, at its close.)





	1. 10/19

**Author's Note:**

> For those joining us for the first time, in the previous fic in this series ([From Tralfamadore, With Love](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11692368)), Steve was missing for 17.5 years, stuck between dimensions without aging thanks to a mishap with a mutant. This fic starts about five months after Steve reappears in the year 2036 and very much takes up where that fic left off.
> 
> Some warnings: lots of casual ableist language; illness, mortality, and anxiety about same continue to be a prominent theme. 
> 
> Title is from Joseph Heller's _Catch-22_ , just to stay insufferably on-theme:
>
>> 'Anything worth living for,' said Nately, 'is worth dying for.'  
> 'And anything worth dying for,' answered the sacrilegious old man, 'is certainly worth living for.'

  


Steve stares at the calendar for a few solid minutes before finally realizing what's catching him.

He glances back at Bucky where he's draped over the couch, one knee propped high, book set against his leg. Something about it leaves him breathless. Bucky's gotten into the charming habit of rolling his sweatpants just above his ankles so Burrito won't snap at the fabric glancing across the floor. It leaves the dark frontier of the hair on his legs only just peeking out. Steve thinks about slipping his hands under the hems and running his palms over Bucky's legs, feeling the strands of hair drag between his fingers while Bucky lets him, ignores him, reads on.

Steve hadn't bothered to question why Bucky's at home—not in his usual relentless pursuit of Hydra's echoes; not at the diner reconfiguring something. He always has something. Today all he's done is stay within eyeshot of Steve and read a book he's made no progress on. Now, Steve realizes, he's figured out why. 

Steve lifts Bucky's outstretched foot off the sofa and slides beneath it, working a thumb against his sole. "Wanna get out of here?" he asks, low. "See a movie or something?"

Bucky pretends to keep reading a while, free hand stroking at Burrito's ear, but when he finally does look at him nothing's concealed. Lines carve deep in the corners of his eyes. It's disarming, even after five months, when Bucky shows him this much. His smokescreen may be as impenetrable as ever, but once Steve finds him in it, Bucky doesn't bother trying to hide from him anymore.

"No," Bucky says. He leaves it there.

Steve nods, massaging deeper into his foot. "Indian food, then? Watch that show about waterskiing drones?"

"You know the drones don't waterski," Bucky says. "I'm not explaining this again."

"Drone Olympics next. Drone Presidency."

"Don't tempt fate."

"Sure they'd do a worse job?"

Bucky's reply is his foot in Steve's face. 

Steve laughs, catching it. He lifts it gently to his mouth, brushing a kiss just above his ankle. He loves the smell of him, the whisper of hair against his lips. 

Bucky looks him like he's exposed a wound. His arm casts out like an elastic band, dragging Steve down against him. Steve balances his weight and settles, Bucky's lips against his brow. 

"I'm not going anywhere," Steve says, ear at Bucky's chest. "You're stuck with me now."

"Gonna hold you to that," Bucky murmurs, and they lie together for a good long while.

  


  


  


Bucky orders his usual Fuck-Me-Up Vindaloo, something he gleefully describes as the only thing on Earth short of a Hydra-sponsored migraine guaranteed to bring tears to his eyes. Steve's left to assume it's an effect of the deadening serum; it was the first food he discovered that was spicy enough to bypass the pain inhibitors in his tastebuds enough to leave his eyes and nose dripping like a faucet. Now, for reasons unknown to Steve, he aims to repeat the experience whenever possible. The extra-spicy vindaloo from _Taj Mahal_ is now Bucky's first line of defense against the first sign of a cold, or if he's feeling particularly desensitized to violence that day, or if he's just experiencing an emotion he'd rather not deal with head-on.

On the television, drones pull daredevils on waterskis across an eel-infested lake. On the sofa beside him, Bucky courts death by chili. "This is it," he intones, to Steve's eternal bewilderment, "I'm done for, this is the end," but he muddles through it and survives with the help of a mountain of tissues and a dash for a spoonful of emergency yogurt.

"Just bring it in with you," Steve calls.

"Don't need it," he says thickly, head lost in the fridge.

"Clearly, you do."

"You questioning me in my own home?"

Bucky always does seem to cheer up after Fuck-Me-Up vindaloo. Steve, meanwhile, has worked his way through the entire _Taj Mahal_ menu twice over in a mere five months.

  


  


  


After dinner, sated, Bucky starts rolling his arm over in its socket the way he often does after a certain hour of the day. Steve manages to argue Bucky onto his belly and slides his knees on either side of his hips, pressing practiced hands into Bucky's aching joints as they watch TV. 

Bucky never complains about anything specific, but after enough feeling around and an ear to his sighs, Steve can usually figure out where the problem is. That doesn't mean he can fix it. Bucky claims Steve's hands address some degree of discomfort, and so Steve keeps at it. Short of an alternative, he's content enough to accept the lie just for the freedom to knead his hands so intimately into all that steadfast muscle and steel. It might have taken him a hundred years, but Steve's finally learned the value of keeping his mouth shut. Sometimes, with Bucky, it's the best gift he has to offer.

  


  


  


After a while, Bucky dozes. Steve watches him adoringly, rubbing a hand against his back. He thinks of the Bucky he left behind, who'd have stared wide-eyed at the television until the picture turned to snow. 

Eighteen years later down to the day and Bucky's furious and yielding in equal turns, grippingly passionate until it gives way to calm. His pain might be getting worse, but at least he's learned how to sleep in the balance.

Steve's starting to understand the trade-off. Bucky remains vigilant. He knows he has enemies and goes to great lengths to keep them at bay. Every day Steve finds a new weapon stashed away in the apartment—a pistol strapped under the couch, the umbrella by the door that's actually a blade. Bucky fights with no less furor than Steve's ever seen, but in spite of having one eye trained firmly over his shoulder, he seems to spend much less of his time afraid. 

There might be people hunting him, but he's kept himself safe for twenty years. Hydra barely exists anymore. The ghosts that have plagued him have been laid to rest.

Now, so has he. He naps on the couch whenever he can. He laughs easily and brightly; loves things, loves Steve, with open abandon. He doesn't spend near so much of his time scowling, though he's as direct and prickly as he's ever been. He's glad of his life and lives it completely. For the first time since the day they first kissed in the '30s, Steve doesn't feel like Bucky's got one foot out the door.

Acceptance. Serenity, of a kind. Bucky acquired them while Steve was gone. He mistook Bucky's demeanor at first for bland resignation, and sometimes it _is_ resignation that sets in his bones. When met with something that he doesn't like, Bucky closes his eyes and gives a sigh that conveys exhaustion in volumes. 

But then there's the other thing, the thing that lets him drift off face-down on the couch, hands free of weapons, Steve's hands digging deep into his damaged nerves. It's what leads him to delegate more and more responsibility to his employees at the diner, freeing up more of his time to spend with Steve.

It's what prevents him from thinking taking another dose of the serum is a good idea.

This _que sera_ , this _come what may_ that gives him peace enough to sleep—might also give him enough to let himself die. Bucky seems to face the idea of the closing curtains without an ounce of apprehension. 

Even as Steve thinks it, he can't seem to believe it. He scans a finger by Bucky's ear, brushing hair away from his face as he sleeps. Bucky hardly stirs—he frowns a little, gives a quiet sound, but then drifts off again as if he hadn't been roused. 

The more Steve watches, the more he understands. Even as the pain in Bucky's chest gets worse—as it stays for longer, as he lies about where it stems from—Steve watches him adapt and starts to figure it out.

It's all about balance. Give and take. If Bucky wants to sleep, he has to sacrifice some of that fight.

Steve wants him to fight. God, he wishes he would. In moments when Steve lets himself think too hard, he's furious at Bucky for the fight he seems to have given up. But the rest of the time, watching him sleep—he wouldn't take this peace from Bucky for the world.

Heat grows behind his eyes. He looks away, buries his fingers deep in Bucky's hair, afraid that if he lets go Bucky might fade away right there on the couch. The drone show is still on the television. The main dumbass has somehow sustained a gash to the head. It looks pretty bad. He holds an icepack to it and somehow grins at the camera.

" _Might've killed you,_ " says a voice off-screen.

The dumbass grins wider. " _You don't fucking say._ "

" _Doesn't that bother you?_ "

" _Should it?_ "

" _You've only got one life to live, you know._ "

This time when the daredevil opens his mouth to speak, his teeth are red with blood. " _To hell with it,_ " he says, so cavalier that Steve's blood runs cold. " _Who ever wanted to live forever?_ "

  


  


***

  


  


Sometimes Bucky still wakes up not knowing where he is.

It's not often. It happens most when he's not sleeping at home. Sam helps by taking most of the away missions. Bucky, in exchange, takes the missions that involve staying awake for more than a day.

Lately his glimpses into surreality have been a little more frequent. It's just—Steve. He's so damn young. He looks the way he did when Bucky dreamed of him, the way he did the last time Bucky saw him—like he's 30. Like no time has passed. Waking up, seeing him there... sometimes it's hard to believe that it's real. That Steve's real. That Bucky's here with him. That they're finally together after all this time.

He'll take the moments of uncertainty, if it means Steve's around. Steve even tolerates it when Bucky grasps at him to make sure he's really there. 

It's a phase. It'll fade. At least he's thankful for reality when it sets back in. That's a nice enough change as it is.

  


  


  


Today when Bucky wakes up, Steve isn't there for him to grasp.

He sits bolt upright, heart pounding. He's in his living room, on his own couch. It's a Sunday afternoon in 2036. October 19th—

October 19th.

It's October 19th, and Steve isn't here. 

He thinks it through, panic pattering in his chest. The shadow realm got him, he decides groggily. Steve was on secondment to the real world for five short months, and that's all Bucky got. Now, his term expired, he's been taken again, time swallowing him up like a vengeful wolf.

Roused by Bucky's anxiety, Burrito shakes his jowls to bleary attention. 

"Where's Steve?" Bucky asks hoarsely, as though he'd know. 

It seems he does know. Burrito gets up and disappears down the hall. 

Bucky follows with timid hope. He finds the dog sitting in front of the bathroom door. Bucky can hear the shower running, shuffling feet. He sets his forehead against the door and listens a while. The world rights itself. This is his hallway. This is his bathroom door, solid wood after Steve ruined the last one. That's his bathroom; that's his boyfriend showering inside. Far from the shadow realm, Steve is five feet away from him, same as he's been for the last five months.

This-realm Steve must have heard his head hit the door. 

"Buck?"

If the shadow realm has him, then the shadow realm's in his bathroom. As compromises go, that might not be the worst one. 

"Yeah," Bucky says, tired of himself.

"You want in?"

"No." Burrito looks up at him, eyebrow cocked, as though calling him on the lie. "I just—you are… _there_. Right?"

"Come see if you want." 

Jesus, Bucky can hear the pity in it. He might have to call Sam to get a proper read on his neuroses. "I'm fine," he says irritably.

"Well, the door's open if you change your mind."

Bucky shuts his eyes and breathes a while, but takes the hint when Burrito starts to nose at the door and swallows his goddamned pride. 

Steve must hear him come in; he peeks around the shower curtain, fingers curling around its plastic edge. Bucky relaxes just to see him. That's Steve Rogers; accept no substitutes. There's the familiar jut of his hip, the slope of his gargantuan back; that's the draw of his lips right there on his dopey face. No sign of the shadow realm.

A smile hitches at Steve's mouth as he watches Bucky watch him. "See something you like?"

Bucky glowers at him instead of answering, stepping angrily out of his sweatpants, one hand tearing the shirt over his head. He wrenches the curtain furiously aside, not bothering to ask to join. 

Steve guides him in with a hand at his spine like he'd expected him all along, and Bucky presses his face to Steve's neck, feeling the curves of his back; tastes the water that pools in his clavicle. "Idiot," he says.

"Me?"

"Me."

"Oh." Steve's mouth sets consolingly at his brow. "Nah."

"Like obviously you got sucked into some kind of time vortex in the drain."

"I mean, who hasn't?"

Bucky sighs against his collarbone, bringing a hand up to cup at his neck. He's still there. Bucky still has him. "Guess I still got more enemies than I do spare sanity tokens," he mutters, "at the end of the day."

"I told you I'm not going anywhere."

"Still time to change your mind."

Steve hums thoughtfully. "What are you thinking? Hawai'i? Aruba?"

Bucky winces. "Take my dysfunction seriously, would you?"

"You like the Mediterranean now, right? The cold season _is_ coming... We could stand to get away."

"You know better."

"Gotta retire eventually, Buck."

Bucky grunts. "Over my dead body."

It's the wrong thing to say. Steve's body goes rigid. 

Bucky shuts his eyes. The shower pounds around them, berating him for his mistake. "Forget I said that," he says, but the damage is done; Steve can't seem to move, immobile with dread. 

Bucky worries at his lip. He tilts his head back to find Steve's eyes shut hard, his breathing turned shallow. "Shit," he says, pitching his head remorsefully into Steve's chest. "Can't we go back to making light of my dysfunction?"

Steve's face turns away, a tick in his jaw, but his hands still grip firm like he doesn't want to let him go. They stand together, ensnared by misery, until the mist bouncing off Steve's behemoth form runs cold.

Fuck the cold. Bucky throws back the shower curtain and steps out of the tub again. "Come to bed," he says, but Steve's fingers hook with his and drag him back again.

"Turn on the backup and come back," Steve suggests instead. He stands under the frigid stream and looks at Bucky with those sad damn eyes, and that's all it ever takes to convince him of anything these days. Bucky reaches around him and shuts off the shower, storms naked over to the closet with the override in it, sets it up, then gets back in the shower and cranes himself around Steve's sopping form.

He turns on the water and cranks it up hot.

The mist bouncing off Steve doesn't stay cold for long.

  


  


  


They manage to make time and get clean at once, fumbling out of the shower in a tangle of limbs. Steve makes drying off a complicated task—he takes Bucky captive in the trap of his towel, tracing his lips around the shell of his ear, erection pressed against him as he barely dries them off. Steve himself is still damp as they march in twisted unison through the hall, but Bucky flips him onto the bed anyway, pinning his wrists over his head as droplets of water seep into the sheets. 

Bucky trails his mouth over the tracks of water left behind on Steve's skin, holding him down, laughing roughly at the way Steve tries to work loose before finally deciding to prove what he's capable of. Steve flips them both over before Bucky even realizes what's happening, pressing his body hard against the bed.

"You gonna do something other than take it for once?" Bucky rasps. He fights to get free, but Steve won't let up; lust surges high. God, he loves it when Steve gets like this.

"You realize you're goading me," Steve says, low, "while I'm in a rare position of authority over you."

"I'm unconvinced," Bucky begins, but he's forced to cut off when Steve hooks one arm under his leg and tangles the fingers of his other hand in Bucky's hair. It leaves Bucky breathless, laughing, more trapped than before.

"You gonna let me take care of you or not?" Steve asks him.

"Might take some work," Bucky admits. But then Steve ruts his hips low across Bucky's dick, and maybe it won't take as much work as he thinks.

Steve smiles against his jaw; ruts his hips again. Bucky's breath hitches. Steve turns the kiss wet against his neck when Bucky's hips rise to try and meet him, but then he's pressed to the bed by Steve's steady hands. "Somewhere to be?" Steve asks, barely distracting himself from kneading a mark into Bucky's throat with his teeth.

"Well, I _was_ gonna do laundry."

"Great. You can throw the sheets in when we're done."

"You sound pretty confident for—"

"Oh, shut up," Steve says, and then does the job for him, slanting his mouth hard over Bucky's. He moves with purpose; Bucky is devoured. Something about Steve's adonis form leaned against him like this, hips rocking, turns Bucky stupid in half a second. One of Steve's hands stays grasped at his hip, the other at his jaw, tangling thickly in his hair. 

His mouth delves. He takes. Bucky wants. Bucky's safe in Steve's ample hands. Whatever stress was left in his rickety shoulders starts to dissolve, and Steve has him; Bucky's his. 

They melt together in a tangle of limbs. Bucky sinks into the bed, arms hooked around Steve's shoulders—his weighing anchor. Steve turns tender for a moment, stroking a thumb at his temple, trailing open-mouthed kisses down his jaw; his hands move down, scanning their way along Bucky's arms.

"Leave them there," Steve mutters, crossing Bucky's wrists above his head. 

Bucky makes a sound he hadn't meant to give. Steve aims to ruin him. Worse, he aims to make him complicit in his own ruination. Bucky wants to, wants him; he wants. He wants to give himself over, to do as Steve says. 

Steve tilts Bucky's head back with a gentle hand again, and Bucky closes his eyes with a stuttering breath. He lies exposed; his fingers rend in the sheets, heart open, throat lain bare. Every brush of Steve's mouth against his skin leaves his breath stuttering, singing. 

Steve's hands trails down his throat, his collarbone. He lets his mouth linger over his pec. His lips tease over his nipple, closing wet and then withdraw. Breath slants hot across his skin; Bucky's back arches, and Steve takes the opportunity he's given. 

He slides his hands beneath him, holding Bucky halfway aloft with steady arms. Bucky's stomach presses against Steve's chest as Steve bends over him again, flicking his tongue and then his teeth at the meat of his chest. Bucky makes a strangled noise, arches against him again; his dick slides wetly against Steve's gut.

God, God, but Bucky loves him. Steve's hands slide down to cup his buttocks, mouth turning wet again as he follows Bucky's treasure trail. He doesn't look, but Bucky sees it in his mind: Steve, looking up at him as he tongues at his skin, wanting to see him gone; smiling when he gets his wish. 

Even to imagine it, Bucky's hips roll. He feels Steve's lips twitch happily against his skin.

Steve bypasses his dick entirely, mouthing instead at the skin of his pelvis. He nips at Bucky's hip, noses into the crook of his leg, and Bucky groans in realization: he means to make him sweat. "You really gonna waste my time with a tease?" Bucky says roughly, and Steve grins; darts his tongue out, draws a narrow line along his thigh, and then mouths at his balls with thorough intention.

Bucky gives a sound of surprise; Steve does it again, sucking gently. Bucky swears a blue streak, barely above a whisper, muttered into the crook of his arm. Steve goes back to teasing him, as though in retribution for having spoken; bites a gentle line across his other thigh.

"Christ," Bucky chokes out. "Are you gonna touch me properly or what?" He barely sounds like himself; his throat has betrayed him, voice flimsy and coarse.

"A little less," Steve says against him, "from the peanut gallery." He snakes his arms around Bucky's thighs, anchoring him there, and Bucky thinks he knows what's coming until Steve finally wraps one loose hand around his dick and just—holds. He doesn't stroke, doesn't tease, doesn't so much as brush the precome off the head of his dick, and suddenly Bucky _does_ understand. 

Something hot and liquid sinks in his gut. "I'm gonna kill you," Bucky says hoarsely. 

Steve just laughs, and sounds like he loves him.

Bucky buries his face in the crook of his arm and shuts his eyes. Anxiety battles briefly with desire and loses out—it's Steve, it's just _Steve_. That's Steve's tongue at his perineum, his lips at his rim. He takes his time, moving away again, dragging his teeth at the meat of his buttocks, waiting for the tension to ease out of Bucky's muscles. "Alright?" Steve mutters, and Bucky nods tightly.

"Yeah," he whispers, "yeah, just—" And Steve presses another kiss to him and settles in, one hand extending long across his calf to wrap at his ankle. From there the path to ruin is slow and enveloping. Steve's lips are a godsend, his tongue like a dream; he eats Bucky out like it's his life's work. The only movement of his hand on Bucky's dick is from the slow, partial roll of Bucky's own hips. It's a slow damn build; it's a long way to fall when the hand around his dick disappears, when Steve doubles down and starts rimming him filthily.

He digs his fingers into the meat of his ass and settles in. He takes time, takes care, wet and slow and careful and _thorough_. The build starts up all over again and Bucky's fingers tear at the sheets. He can't stop his breath from hitching, from making these ridiculous sounds when Steve's tongue circles a little harder; when his nose or forehead brushes against his balls. In a matter of minutes, Bucky's adrift: taut like a bowstring, wanting Steve inside him and yet sure he couldn't take it. Sure it would break what control he has left.

"Bucky," Steve says, voice low, right against him, and it rips something open in the fragile fabric of his chest.

"God," Bucky gasps. He lets go of the twisted sheets long enough to open the drawer and throw lube at Steve's head. "Do me properly."

Steve grins, grabbing the lube from where it didn't even hit him. He doesn't say anything, just holds Bucky's eye, pressing a kiss to the inside of his thigh as he slicks up his fingers. 

It's stupid how much that does for him. "Fuck," Bucky mutters, "Jesus Christ," and then Steve rims him with the tip of his finger all over again.

"I thought I told you to put your hands over your head," Steve says.

"You're so bad at this," Bucky tells him, even as he tangles them back where they were. "Just the worst."

Steve replies by sliding slow into him, just enough to make him shut up.

Bucky's eyes close. The world beyond the bedroom falls away. Steve takes him slow, the way he always does, and this is always like awakening, being on the other side. To remember what makes Steve want this—why he craves this, why he begs to be taken apart—leaves Bucky undone in its own respect.

Bucky's not near so good at being taken apart. Steve reminds him how good it can be. He whispers something about staying put and moves his free hand to Bucky's cock, finally stroking properly; his thumb finds that bead of arousal and traces a line with it down his length. Like he's drawing a map. Steve's fingers stroke inside, look for the fucking—yes, Jesus, that's good, Bucky sees stars; his mouth gasps open and never closes, breath coming hard as Steve presses and eases off, presses, withdraws. Steve lubes his fingers up again and crooks them just right all over again, other palm closed loose over Bucky's cock, and it brings him close to the edge, and then away; it's almost enough, but not quite. Steve's too far from him.

"Stop fucking around," Bucky says tensely, "and _fuck me_ —"

Steve smiles and kisses his leg, then lets go of his dick and lubes up his own. He keeps fucking him with his fingers as he does—"You know how I'm gonna feel," Steve says, pressing with slow, sinful strokes. "Gonna make you come so good, Bucky." And then he wastes no time, knowing how Bucky hates to be left open; he takes his fingers out and presses his cock in, slow and careful, fucking out and in gently as he holds Bucky down on the bed. 

In no time flat Bucky's stretched and gasping on just half his dick, Steve pressing a bruising grip into his hips. "Oh, God," Bucky says, watching as Steve pulls out and then in with shallow strokes. He's full, he's so full already, Christ there's so much of him. Steve's kneeling, Bucky halfway in his lap, and the effort's etched on every inch of his body. Those muscles roping all over. Jesus, Bucky's liable to be destroyed. 

He'd let him. Steve knows he'd let him, but stays gentle and firm. "Fuck me," Bucky says, head tilting back. "Come here and fuck me," and just like that Steve's draped over him, cock deep enough in him to make Bucky shout, but Steve's here; Steve's here. That's all he wanted. 

"Thank you," Steve whispers, and Bucky almost laughs, but it comes out shaky. Steve's moving anyway, so it doesn't matter anymore. It all washes away but Steve, marvellously big, careful and slow. It's barely a few strokes before Bucky forgets everything else, feels only this, being lain bare.

He trusts Steve with him. Draped over him, loving him, Steve fucks him with devotion—this is almost enough. Breathing Steve in, his sweat and sex, is almost enough to convince him he's here for good. "I'm not going anywhere," Steve tells him, as though reading his mind, mouthing fervidly against his jaw. His hand finds his dick, and it's good; Steve always makes him work for it, with infuriating grasps that always deliver with final twists. "I'm not going anywhere, Bucky, I—" and Bucky spills with it, coming hard, Steve murmuring sweet nothings until his voice runs raw. 

They've been doing this for a hundred years, in fits and starts, but it never feels like enough until this: until they've torn down each other's walls and found each other at his core, then rearranged themselves around each other, piece by clattering, breakable piece.

  


  


  


He does call Sam later, while folding laundry.

"Am I crazy?" Bucky says without bothering with a greeting. Steve's out with the dog, so naturally Bucky's become convinced he's been eaten by time. "Like, batshit crazy? Certifiable in ways I don't even know about?"

Sam doesn't answer right away. "Well..."

Bucky scowls. "Thanks, asshole."

"Anytime. Anything else?"

"I'm asking if I'm still crazy the way I used to be. You know—paranoid, conspiracizing, overprotective, too blind to see it most days..."

Sam sighs, apparently realizing he's meant to take this seriously. "Well, you make some pretty rash decisions for reasons that are unclear to others, but your gut's usually right. I wouldn't call it crazy so much as being good at predicting shitty outcomes coupled with bad impulse control."

Bucky sneers at the ceiling. "Oh, is that all?"

"If you took a little more time to consider yourself, you'd seem less crazy in general. I think I know you too well for it to look crazy to me."

It's a kinder assessment than Bucky'd expected. "That's… not the worst thing you've ever said to me."

"Now what the hell's wrong with you that you're calling in reinforcements? Isn't Steve frontline defense for this kind of thing?"

"Steve's kinda what it's…" He pinches at his eyes. "Look, it's—I just had an entire day where I had to have Steve within eyeshot of me, or I thought he'd get fucking, assassinated, or something, I don't know. Haven't felt like this for a solid decade. Remember when you bombed your way into that stellar tornado and I busted through six storeys to get to you?"

"Assassinated?" Sam says, ignoring the rest. "Who by? Does anyone know Steve's here?"

"No. That's my point. I don't know where the hell this shit's coming from. It wasn't here yesterday."

"Well." Sam makes a hedging sound. He really must trust Bucky's instincts to be taking him so seriously. "You sure there's not something specific pointing you to it? Rectify sniffing around or something?"

"No."

It's abrupt. Sam's pause says enough. "But…"

Bucky throws himself down on the bed, one hand over his eyes, the other still halfway tangled in the shirt he'd been folding. "I seem to think that time has an agenda and might try to claim Steve back again," he grits out.

Far from chewing him out on it, Sam seems to understand. "Oh, man, is it 10/19 already?"

"It—what?"

"Jack, go to bed. You're always dumb off your ass on 10/19. Sleep it off and you'll be fine."

"Sam—what are you talking about?"

"You got a crazy relationship with this day and you know it. Every year, you start to go hunting for Steve like you caught his damn scent or something. Remember that year you camped out in front of Reginald Estates with like a tent and everything and wound up getting damn near arrested for vagrancy?"

Bucky pauses. It... wasn't actually the _one_ year that happened.

"Oh, you gotta be kidding me," Sam mutters.

"Listen—"

"Well," he sighs, "that's kinda my point. There's no point trying to engage with your own sanity on 10/19, probably ever again. It won't be where it's meant to be. Steve effectively died and now you got some kind of anniversary effect about it. Happens to the best of us."

"He's not dead! He's right here!"

"Yeah, tell that to seventeen years of habit. Listen, wake up tomorrow and call me back if you still need a reality check. But in the meantime, best thing you can do is just get through the day. Get some sleep. Quit worrying about it."

He hurls himself to his feet. "Fine," he says casually.

"Really?"

" _No._ "

Sam sighs. "You want me to say it out loud?"

"You better, because if Steve doesn't come back with the dog soon I might punch my way through another six fuckin storeys."

"Well, you'll lose your deposit if you do that."

Bucky glowers. "Keep this up and you'll be a shoe-in to win the Captain America stand-up pageant."

"Steve's not gonna get eaten by time," he says indulgently. "Time doesn't eat people." Then he pauses. "Much. Anymore."

Bucky throws a shirt at the ceiling. "If you're not gonna help!"

"Look, it wasn't even time that ate Steve in the first place. It was a kid who didn't have control of his powers and who doesn't even seem to exist anymore. The odds of him finding Steve twice are slim to none. For all we know, he doesn't live in this timeline at all."

Would that neuroses responded to reason. Bucky throws himself dramatically onto the bed again.

"No one's disappeared in eighteen years, Jack," Sam says quietly. "That's to the day, now."

"I know."

"Hold onto that. At least try."

The knot of dread in his chest has at least loosened. Bucky's glad he called.

"Since I got you on the line, I got a favour to ask."

Bucky rubs at his eyes. "Shoot."

"Assuming Steve manages to make it through the night intact—"

"Captain Laugh Riot!" he yells.

"—you think I could borrow him for dinner tomorrow night?"

Bucky frowns. "You want to _borrow_ him? What is this, a sex thing?"

"Yeah, fuckass, it's a sex thing. You cracked my code. No, I, uh..." Then Sam hesitates, and Bucky gets concerned. "I wanted to ask him if he'd be my best man. For the wedding."

Bucky's breath leaves him in a hot, sudden wave. "Oh."

"I wanted to, uh. Run it by you. What I was doing. So you wouldn't be blindsided." There's a delicate pause. Bucky can almost hear Sam wincing. "You know it'd be you, Barnes. If we were better at..."

 _Anything,_ Bucky thinks, but he doesn't need to hear it. "No, yeah," he cuts in. It sounds a little airy even to his own ears. "Listen—Sam, it's fine. I get it. Steve's the right choice. He's enthusiastic, he and Marcus get along like a house on fire, he'll get teary-eyed at all the right times. You know I don't care much for weddings anyhow."

"Are you—"

"I mean it. It's totally fine." This time, he's relieved to hear his voice sounds normal. "Think it might be kinda weird for me to be standing up with you, anyhow."

They lapse into a silence of understanding, this time. Bucky looks up to the ceiling and sighs. "You know I'm happy for you, Sam."

"Yeah," Sam says. "I know you are."

"You deserve the best. So take the best. He loves you, loves Mark." Bucky rolls to his feet and starts folding again. "Maria a bridesmaid?"

"She's in my _honour guard_ , yeah. With Natasha."

"Shit, really?"

"Yeah."

"How's that going?"

"Not perfect, but alright. Like Maria keeps saying in some weird high-pitched voice, it's been three years and they're totally over it." He sighs. "Steve'll help."

"You matching your dress to theirs?"

"Funny."

"I hear taffeta's in."

"You being like this just to cover up your bullshit feelings?"

"My what now?"

Sam gives a low laugh. "You _are_ gonna be there, at least," he asks. "Right?"

Bucky blinks. He's surprised it's even a question. "Yeah, Sam. Course I am. Wouldn't miss it."

"I mean it. It's important to me that you be there."

"I wasn't being an asshole for once. Unless the world's in peril, you can count on it."

Another silence, harder to read. Grateful, maybe, on both their parts.

"Besides," Bucky adds, trying to deflect from sentiment. "Steve won't make it through the wedding without someone to cry on. Consider it my wedding present that it won't be you."

"How considerate."

"Only the best, Sam." 

Somewhere down the hall, Steve's key rattles in the door.

"Well," Bucky sighs. "He lives."

"What is it, only ten? Night's still young."

"Eat shit, Wilson," he says, instead of thanks.

"Go be unconscious," Sam bites back, and Bucky ends the call with a smile.

  


  


  


He really does go to bed, once the laundry's put away and Steve's hauled him under the covers again. Lazy necking turns into a hot mess all over again, the pair of them stroking each other off like tomorrow may not come. 

Steve tucks as much of Bucky as he can against him, his breath glancing hot off the nape of Bucky's neck, and Bucky sleeps easier than he'd thought he would. When he wakes up again, the sun's shining bright, and Steve is still there, caught up in his limbs. 

It's October 20th, 2036, and time has absolutely nothing to prove.

  


  



	2. Atlas, Stubborn Bastard

  


"So how was yesterday?"

Steve's been watching Sam cook in silence, spacing out. "Oh," he says, blinking awake. "Fine."

"You sure about that?"

"Yeah. I…" He shakes his head and winces. "You talk to him at all?"

Sam nods. Steve nods with him. "I guess there's no point in pretending it wasn't weird. It was pretty low-key. He just wanted to hang around, not really do anything. We ate, read, watched bad television."

"All within twenty feet of each other."

A smile quirks at his lips before he can stop it. "You say that like I'm supposed to mind."

Sam besets him with a tired expression. Steve smiles wider. "It was weird to see him that spooked over nothing," he admits. "Water rolls off his back pretty easy most of the time these days."

"It _does_?"

He meets Sam's gaze, doesn't say anything. Maybe there are some things about Bucky Sam really never touched. "It was really no big deal," Steve repeats, and Sam flips a bean burger over in its pan and sighs. "I've dealt with a lot worse from Bucky."

"Well." Sam plates the burgers; assembles them gracefully. "You never did mind his bullshit."

"He's also dealt with a lot worse from me."

"Guess you two do deserve each other."

"God, y'know—" He takes the plate from Sam. "Everybody says that like we're miserable people. Are we that bad?"

"Only when you're without the other." Steve's spine straightens in pre-emptive defense, but Sam doesn't seem to mean anything by it. "That's a rare thing in the world, man. To feel that way about someone and have him feel it right back."

Something in his tone hits a peculiar note. Steve watches him for a while, but Sam won't meet his eye. "Oh my God," he says instead, mouth fumbling the words around a bite of burger. "I was hungry. You hungry?"

"I'm hungry," Steve says. The lie, at least, gets Sam to look at him. Now it's Steve who wants to deflect. He pops a potato in his mouth to appease him. "Mmm."

The façade doesn't stick. Sam lets out a slow breath as he leans against the cabinets behind him. "You got an idea of what you're gonna do?" Sam asks, quiet. "Once he's… y'know."

 _Gone,_ Sam wants to say, or maybe even _Dead_. To imagine either, the potato in Steve's mouth turns to ash. "No," he says hollowly, reaching for his beer to wash it down. "Still can't think about it for very long."

"Any progress on the negotiation front?"

Steve shakes his head. "First of the month we have it out. The problem is that he always knows when the argument's coming and avoids me most of the day. That pushes it late, and by then he's had a full day's work, his pain's acting up, I've been rehearsing my argument for fifteen hours..." He catches Sam's eye with intensity. "I wouldn't call it progress."

"Have you tried… oh, I dunno, not scheduling it?"

"Bucky's terms, not mine. He seems to think I'd bring it up daily otherwise."

"Well."

"Yeah, I know. He's not wrong."

They eat a while in heavy silence. 

"This is good," Steve says finally, though the weight in his gut prevents any real enjoyment. "I doubted you, but—"

"I gotta ask you something."

Sam's looking at him with a seriousness that strikes thick lines out of the corners of his eyes. Steve sits up straighter, concerned. "Anything."

"I…" He trails off already, sighing discomfort. "It's not a _great_ request."

"Sam."

"You know... the wedding. _My_ wedding. Next month."

"Yeah…"

"I…" He collapses over his hands where they're leaned against the counter. "I still need a best man."

A beat passes. Steve realizes what he's asking. "Oh," he says, relieved. He'd thought it was gonna be a _lot_ worse. "Hey, no problem. I'll ask Bucky for you."

Sam narrows his eyes. "Really? Did I invite _Barnes_ over for dinner?"

Steve blinks. "Oh." Then it really hits. "Oh!"

"Damn. Someone looked at _you_ and said, 'that's the genius who's gonna lead the Allies to victory'?"

"Actually they said, 'that guy's our patsy.'"

"That makes sense."

Steve fights a shambling smile. "Does that mean you're asking... me?"

"Yeah, dumbass. I'm asking you."

Steve presses a hand to his chest and _beams_. Sam waves a discouraging hand in the air. "I don't think you understand what I'm asking. The wedding's in _four weeks,_ Steve. Less than that. On the one hand, Mark and his friends are being their terrifying lawyer control-freak selves when it comes to this thing. The only thing I actually have to do is show up... which I thought was unreasonably easy, until I started lying out of my ass to my husband-to-be about how much work I've actually done towards that end."

"Oh, Sam."

"Yeah. That's what I'm saying. This isn't an honour as much as it is me asking you to come on board at the last possible minute to save my ass."

"I've been known to do that."

"That's why I'm bothering. If it was anyone else I feel like I'd just throw in the towel and disappear myself, or…" He shakes his head minutely. "Something."

Steve blinks, turning serious. "Sam."

"Sometimes I'm not sure I'm built for this kind of thing," Sam mutters, looking off into some top corner of the room. Steve wonders if he meant to say it aloud. He chews on one side of his mouth, and sometimes he's a fish out of water with these things. He can't figure out at a glance what's bothering him; too much history separates this Sam from the Sam he knew to be able to pick it out of the air.

"Okay," Steve says, pulling his Captain America voice out of long retirement. "I'm not America's Patsy for nothing. We'll make this right."

A smile crawls shyly across Sam's face. "Is that you accepting?"

"I have conditions."

He slumps back against the cupboards, but nods indulgently. "Go on."

"One is that you stop pretending like this isn't an honour. Because it is, and not just because you think I'm good at crisis management. I'll admit I'm a little surprised—"

"You shouldn't be. Always meant for my brother to be there, but if it won't be Gideon…" Sam shrugs, humble. "Better be you."

Steve blinks at him a few too many times. Sam rolls his eyes. "Don't... do that," he says, throwing a napkin at him. "Jack wasn't wrong about you, was he?"

"What? What'd he say?"

"That you're gonna cry the whole time."

Steve makes a face that might've been a pout. Sam throws another napkin at him in response. Steve grins and takes a second to compose himself; his next condition was gonna be to ask Sam what was giving him pause—be it cold feet, regrets, or worse—but of course it's his family. Steve's only uncovered bits and pieces about what happened to them; Sam's not keen to talk about it himself, apparently taking the position that it's better to look forward. From what Steve can discern, though, a nebulous but highly specific threat of harm against his mother and sister led Sam to usher the pair of them plus his brother to a safehouse, which soon became collateral in a clash with the Brotherhood of Mutants.

"They weren't targeted," Bucky'd explained to him, soft with residual compassion. "At least, I don't think they were. Reminded me of Wanda in Nigeria back then, remember that?" Of course Steve did; it'd only been two years ago. She'd done it to save his life. "Someone's powers misfired, and…" Bucky'd snapped his fingers and trailed off, shrugging, as though nothing more needed to be said.

After the fact, Bucky said, Sam had taken a considerable sabbatical from the position of Captain America. When he came back months later, he seemed more or less like himself, but something in the way Bucky talks about it gives Steve the impression it's only the partial story. Sam won't answer any questions from anyone about where he was or what he was doing; Bucky also seems to know more than he'll talk about, and that's more than enough for Steve to realize he'll probably never know exactly what happened. 

What he does know is that UFoE didn't have as much trouble from the Brotherhood of Mutants for a while after Sam's walkabout. He also knows that Sam's the first person they call when they need to intimidate the Brotherhood into submission these days. Steve can connect enough dots to get the general picture.

"You have to tell me when you're having cold feet," Steve finally says, instead of pressing on an old bruise. "For whatever reason—Marcus-related, Gideon-related, commitment, whatever. I don't care what it is, I'm not gonna judge you, but you have to let me at least try to talk you down. That's the best man's job." 

Sam smiles. "Okay."

"And you have to let me shed a tear without throwing things at me."

"You can shed one tear," Sam concedes, holding up a solitary finger.

"That's probably all I have in me anyway."

They hold each other's eye a few seconds before Sam grins wide and steps around the counter. "Go on," Sam laughs, gesturing him forward, and Steve meets him halfway in a solid embrace.

It's a celebratory thing, or it starts out that way; suddenly sentimentality gets the best of them both, and they double down for a second too long. Being out of time has been easier on Steve, this time, but it rarely feels quite like this—like he never left, like it's all been unchanged by the passing of time. 

Maybe Sam feels something similar, because he pulls back with a tight smile and a grip at his shoulder. "Thank you," he says, low and sincere. "I gotta tell you, it really sucked when you weren't around."

Steve gives a fragile smile. "Thank _you,_ " he says, and means it on more levels than just the one. "God knows I need something to fill my time. No better cause than this one."

"Don't sound so sure," Sam says. He stoops beneath the counter and slams a gigantic binder on the counter on his way back up. 

It must be 300 pages. "What—"

Sam holds up a hand and turns to page one. "Table of contents. There's wedding apparel." He turns the page, drags a finger down some list. "Possible table settings. The ones we've chosen are highlighted."

"Dear _God,_ " Steve says, but then Sam's stooping again and coming up with another one.

"Ambiance and decor!" he declares, throwing this binder on top of the first.

Steve's speechless. Sam just opens the fridge and grabs more beers. "Downright required to get through this thing."

"Let me guess. This is all Marcus' work?"

"Years of planning. He's been waiting to get married for a long-ass time. Meanwhile I can't even get my shit together long enough to find a tux four weeks before the thing."

Steve reaches a hesitant hand and leafs through a few pages. "So you're wearing a tux?"

Sam shuts his eyes hard. "No, actually, we talked about that, but we're not doing that now."

"Sam..."

"It's fine!" He takes a considerable swig of his beer.

"What about rings? Who's dealing with those?"

"You are."

"And where are they?"

"They're... somewhere."

A beat passes where Steve thinks he's kidding. 

He is not kidding. 

"Sam!"

"I said they're somewhere!"

Steve shakes his head, smile shambling at his lips as Sam tips his head back and drains his beer. "You better start reading," he says as he resurfaces, pointing at the binder. "If Mark comes home before you're through, you know he'll quiz you on it, and me for that matter, and then we'll both be in trouble."

" _We_ , huh?"

Sam glares at him. "You willing to take the risk?"

After a staring second, Steve pulls the material closer toward him and hunkers down. "How long ago did you _officially_ ask me to do this, by the way?"

"Four months ago."

"And the colour scheme?"

Sam stares.

"Okay," Steve sighs. "What are the odds I can take these home with me for a day?"

"One day, fine. Two days or more and I'll be in trouble."

"One day it is. I'll bring it all back to HQ before 3:00pm."

"Thank you," Sam sighs.

"You're welcome," Steve says, grinning wide. "Okay, so—help me with the navigation of this thing. Is the 'Schemes' tab what I think it is, or is that something more nefarious I should only read after a few more beers?"

  


  


  


Steve _is_ thankful for something to do; that much was true. But it doesn't change that the need to have it out with Bucky pools persistently in his fingertips for days. He doesn't bother to dig into why; he just knows he's budding for a fight. Burrito lumbers beside him through Brooklyn parks for as long as he can handle on the days when Steve needs to shake it out, and then Steve takes him home and runs afternoons and evenings through old familiar October leaves.

By some act of God, Steve manages to hold out. Maybe that's why it turns raw so fast, when he finally picks the fight.

"What am I supposed to do?" Steve asks, voice cracking. "How do you expect me to handle this? I don't know what you're doing with your time just because you apparently think it's too dangerous for—for me! The healthiest, strongest among you!"

Bucky's standing on the other side of the kitchen, a counter between them, arms crossed unhappily across his chest. "It's not about—"

"What needs to happen for things to change? You know you're getting weak. I _know_ you can feel it, Bucky, I can see it on your face, so when are you gonna retire? I need a better answer than 'over your dead body,' because that doesn't fly with me. I need a plan, or one of these days you're gonna wind up on the wrong end of this thing—"

"Now you're doubting my ability to run my own damn mission? I'm not strong enough to take care of myself, is that it?"

"You're losing strength every day, Bucky. Every. Day. I see it around the house, I see it at the diner, I see it at work, but you somehow expect me to believe that your fieldwork is flawless? Sorry, no. We need to talk about this."

"We really don't."

Steve seethes at him, exasperated. "You can't just keep me in the dark like this. You expect me to live with the knowledge that with every day that passes, you're fighting weaker than you were the day before and doing nothing about—"

"You don't have all the information," Bucky says. His voice is controlled, perilously so. "You're forming partial conclusions based on brazen assumptions—"

"So let me in! If you refuse to retire, let me in. I can _help_ you."

" _No._ "

" _Why not?_ "

"Because I'm trying keeping you safe!"

Steve shakes his head in disbelief.

"Trust me when I tell you that you don't want to fuck with these people. Trust me—"

"So somehow, when _I_ talk about _your_ safety, I'm being condescending, but when _you_ talk about _my_ safety..."

"You _are_ being condescending."

"I'm not asking for something trivial here. Understand me when I say that I _need_ this information to…" He trails off, runs an anxious hand over his mouth. "Bucky, every secret mission you go on—every day you leave the house without telling me what's going on—I can't help thinking that today could be the day the day you don't come back. And when that happens—"

"The solution to your problem is to have more faith in my abilities, Steve. End of conversation."

"Bucky! God!" Steve spits it out, furious. "Sometimes I think this whole thing's a front for the fact that you actually _want_ to die in the field!"

He didn't expect it to have an impact, but it does. Bucky's face irons out. He looks at Steve like he's thrown him a grenade. He opens his mouth, then closes it again; does better on the second go of it. 

"I am trying," Bucky says thinly, "to wrap something up, in the time I have left. That time is limited. That means I have to work fast. You're framing it like I'm trying to court an early grave just to—I dunno—hurt you, or—"

"I don't think it has anything to do with me," Steve says. That much is true. "That's why I'm not buying your BS about allegedly keeping me safe. Now you answer me. On the day you don't come home—"

" _If,_ " Bucky hisses, "I don't come home."

" _If,_ " Steve seethes, "you don't, then on that day, I'm gonna be left tracking you down clueless about any single thing you've done. I won't even know where to start, I won't have even a general idea where you might be." He shrugs wildly, hands slapping hard against his thighs. "How? How am I supposed to deal with that? Eventually I'm gonna figure it out, only it's gonna be through some kind of crazy guesswork because you're too busy hiding it from me—"

"Keeping you out of it has a point—"

"—just to be able to find your dead body!"

Another impact, unexpected. For a long, stagnant minute, Bucky doesn't reply. Their argument has advanced and devolved again so many times over the months, gone in circles, but this feels different. Finally they're on the edge of something, a critical point.

Bucky swallows, heavy. "I don't expect you to—"

"No?" Steve rasps. "You'd let yourself be left there so they can do with you as they see fit?"

Bucky stares. He looks more haunted than Steve's seen him in months.

"You talk about your time left," Steve says low, "like the clock's guaranteed, like you're as strong as you ever were and not like you wince every time you dry your hair. You… Bucky— _Bucky_ , are you listening to me?"

"I'm listening." He's poised his hands against the counter, head bowed, like he's in pain even as Steve speaks.

"For all your damn secrets, I'm gonna expose them on the day when you don't come home. If you keep this up, _all_ of it will be a blindside. Don't you see how that's unfair? I won't know that morning when you leave that you're not coming home, and I won't know what I'm going to find when I have to start looking for you until it tears me apart. You want respect from me for what you're going through? I'm trying, Bucky, really. I'm doing the best I can. But you won't give an inch. You won't get healthy, you won't retire, you won't let me _help you_ —"

"Steve, enough."

"I'm not finished!"

"I said I _need a minute_!"

Steve forcibly swallows down his retort. God, but it's hard. Something in him feels to be a hair's breadth from breaking.

Bucky finally looks up at him, brow contorted, an indeterminate time later. "So what are you actually asking for?" he asks, raw. "What is it you actually want?"

"Take the serum."

Bucky lets go of a cry of frustration, hand wrested in his hair. "Oh, give it a _rest_!"

"It would solve—"

"It would solve nothing! It would prolong the problem if anything! Listen, I'm not getting into this. Not now—"

"You're not even gonna consider—?"

"No."

"I can't—" Steve throws his arms wide. "I don't understand you!"

"Look. You know my argument. You wanna get sidetracked or you want to talk about what's realistic?"

Steve shuts his eyes hard. "Then retire," he says thickly.

"And who'll finish the job?"

"Who cares?"

"I care. You want me to step away from something with this much investment without a plan?"

"Why not Natasha?"

"She doesn't have the agility to do what I do anymore, you know that. She can't do it by herself."

"Then pass the buck to somebody else."

"No."

" _Why not_?"

"Because it's my fight."

Steve shakes his head. There's nothing he can do with that. "Then I want information."

"If they find out you know about them, they will kill you."

"They might kill me anyway."

"Let's not help the odds."

He throws a furious hand. "And if they kill _you_?"

"Then I guess they kill me."

" _Bucky._ "

"I just—I can't, right now, Steve. I can't retire. I'm not being an asshole, I'm trying to be honest. It's not on the table for me, not yet."

"That's insane! You won't get it done if you die in the field!"

"You think I won't take them with me?"

Steve's incredulous. A thought crosses his mind he's not ready to deal with yet. "So what needs to happen before you can retire? What needs to change?"

"I don't know. I just don't. I'll know when it happens."

"Give me something, Bucky. Anything, just to make me feel less like I'm waiting for your draft card all over again. How can I help you?"

Bucky just shrugs at him. He doesn't look mad anymore. He just looks sorry. "You can't."

Steve waits for a better answer. Bucky surrenders with his hands. "It's undercover work, Steve. In Russian, with Russians. Me and Natasha have been laying the groundwork for more than a decade. She's in this so deep that she's an actual veritable international liaison, and anything I do at this stage— _anything_ I do—to undermine the integrity of the operation is going to put her at risk." He taps at his chest. "It puts me at risk. I can't train you fast enough not to worry about you, and I can't worry about you either. Natasha can't worry about you. What I _need_ —what's gonna keep my performance peak—is to keep you out of this."

"If Natasha's in governance, then you're—what? Showing up to shady meetings with explosives strapped to you?"

"I'm trying to," he begins, but it surprises them both by wavering in his throat. Bucky shuts his eyes and swallows hard. "You know what US relations with Russia are like. How do you think it's going to go if they find out two US-Russian double-agents are trying to bring their clandestine operations down from the inside? The less you know about any of it, the better. The less you're involved, the better. Natasha and I put ourselves at enough risk—"

"Then I won't be able to find you if they take you down, Bucky." He shrugs wildly, hands slapping against his thighs. "I won't ever know what happened to you. You'll just disappear, and I—"

There's that look on Bucky's face again. This time, Steve figures out what it means.

His heart races. He sinks into the nearest chair with a steadying hand at the counter. "Oh."

"If I die—"

"Don't. Just—"

"—you should leave me there."

Steve shuts his eyes hard. He can't deal with this. Suddenly he wishes he was anywhere else. 

"And if I don't die, I'll be dead soon enough. If I don't come home, Steve— _if_ I don't—"

But Steve sets a hand at his mouth, and Bucky seems to figure out not to keep talking. "You really mean to die in the field," he says. Anger drains out of him until he feels dizzy. "You always did."

"I _mean_ to survive."

"No," Steve says, shaking his head. "If you meant to survive, you'd take the serum."

Bucky just stares. Steve stares back. The walls feel to be falling around them.

"Is this why you don't care about your decline? You don't plan to see it through?"

"I care," Bucky says. "I'm trying to—balance a lot of things."

"This isn't balanced." The taste of metal burns on his tongue. "You want me to accept your disappearance at face value and never investigate, never find out what happened to you—you want me to leave you at Hydra's hands and just accept that you're dead? What makes you think they won't give you the serum anyway just to keep you alive?"

Something changes in Bucky's face. "I… guess that's a risk I'm willing to take."

"I don't understand that. I don't understand. You expect me to sit here, knowing all this, and just watch you throw yourself at the mercy of their initiative without a fight."

"I am fighting. I have been fighting. That's the whole point. I aim to go down fighting. I get what you're saying, Steve, but to ask me to sit on my ass for the next two years and let the mechanical failure that _they caused_ take me down day by day until there's nothing left—that's twice as helpless as what you're accusing me of. Don't ask me to retire. Not until I've done something about it."

"Then let me _help you._ "

"If they kill you and spare me, Steve, I won't be able to carry on."

"But you think that I will?"

The phrase crumbles like shattering glass. Bucky holds his eye, like he doesn't know what to do, and that's enough; Steve's heard enough. He gets up from the stool and walks away, just to get space, get air, to walk into a world where things make sense, but he's barely gotten two steps before Bucky's leapt over the counter and grabbed a hand at his sleeve.

"Just—wait," Bucky breathes.

"Why? There's no room to budge so far as you're concerned, so what's the point—"

"Just," Bucky says again, grabbing a hand more tightly at his wrist, and for some reason that's what finally breaches the levee; streaks of heartbreak track down his cheeks.

"Would you go through all that again?" Steve grits out, breaking. "Knowing I could just disappear without a trace, without you ever knowing what happened? Could you do that again? Because I can't."

Bucky doesn't have a reply. He brushes a thumb at his face, cups a hand to his jaw.

"God, Bucky, I'm trying. I'm really trying here, but I don't think I have this in me." Emotion crests in him again; he swallows it back, forces a steadying breath. "I can't just sit here and wait without knowing for the day you… You have to give me something, Bucky. I need something, or I—"

"Okay," Bucky whispers hastily, like he can't hear the rest. It's like he can't stand this at all, can't stand to see him like this; he brushes the tears off Steve's face. "I'm getting it. I just—need a little time."

"What? And then what? What's gonna change in a week, a month?"

"I don't know, but I—need for you not to leave, right now. Just let me try, let me… think on it. If I don't have anything for you, then—fine, I can't stop you, I can't… but not now. Just give me a bit of time."

"You have to give me more than this. I need something, I don't care what it is at this point, I really don't, but I—can't go on like this. It's too much, Buck. I'm not strong enough." He shrugs, final. "I'm not strong enough to carry it all."

"Okay," Bucky says, and brushes his mouth across Steve's. It's barely even a kiss; he presses his lips at his nose, his cheek, his temple, his brow. "I don't know what I—but I won't leave you to carry everything." He whispers the words like a promise at his lips, and Steve almost believes him; God, he wants to believe him. "One way or another, you won't have to carry everything."

  


  



	3. Cupid's Meddling Hand

  


"You know," says Natasha, "you should really get Stark to check that out."

Bucky blinks, then glowers, more annoyed with himself than with her. He'd hoped no one had noticed his arm deactivate in the middle of that meeting, but then he had hissed loud enough to attract even the most clueless of attentions. It had powered right back up again, the searing in his head fading to a dull ache in seconds. Now a vicodin later and the whole incident's but a memory. 

Or it was.

"Don't know what you're talking about," Bucky says. 

Natasha raises her hands and walks away. "Just hope it doesn't happen in combat," she tells him, "or worse, when Steve's there to see it," and suddenly Bucky thinks there might be something to following up with Stark after all.

  


  


  


It's not just sudden deactivations that are bothering him. His precision's going, too; it has been for a while. He can't write or sketch with near so much detail as he used to, and now, trying to do bookkeeping on a Friday night, Bucky's having enough trouble with his fine motor skills that he throws his pen straight into the wall.

At least his strength is fine. Thankfully it's slow in the diner. The only one there is Lonnie, and Lonnie can't see shit anyway.

"Bad day, son?" Lonnie asks anyway, all the way from his corner booth.

Bucky rubs at his face. "String of 'em," he mutters; and it's true. Things are only now starting to feel right with Steve. Last night they'd finally fucked on the kitchen table, passionate and furious and on the right side of desperate, but they're still not really meeting each other's eye, let alone talking. He wouldn't know what to say if they were.

Now, at the end of a week of tension, he's tired as hell and wants to go home. But it's Friday, and he's supposed to be at Happy's. The trouble is that it's been weeks since he's picked up his guitar, and damn if he's gonna admit that to Steve. 

Something else to lie about. Another thing to hide. It's just not worth the fight, not when they can finally stand to be in the same room again. It's only matter of time before Steve shows up to Happy's only to find Bucky not there—and the diner excuse is a good one, but it'll only work once. He plans to keep it on hand for as long as he can.

Natasha's not wrong. What he's doing isn't working. If he keeps trying to cover his life up like this, pretty soon Steve won't be a part of it. There's gotta be a tweak—something Stark can offer to make the connections better between his brain and the hardware. He _will_ check in with him… not tomorrow, not Saturday. Farmer's market won't patronize itself. Next week, then. Or at the board meeting Wednesday... though that's awfully close to Sam's wedding. He wouldn't want to be armless in case he has to go be Cap on the big day. 

The week after next. Though if Sam's on his honeymoon...

He'll get there. Eventually. 

Any day now.

  


  


  


"Just—"

"I got it, I got it."

"You do not got it, you can't even see what you got."

"I can see fine! I can see damn well better than you—"

"Hey!"

Bucky follows the voices. He'd arrived at the venue with Steve, determined to use the surplus time to try and get halfway drunk before the ceremony started, but there was no booze to be found. He caught wind of a rumour that the bar was beer, wine, and champagne only and immediately set off to disabuse himself of the notion, only to run into Rhodes and Carol in the alley in combat with someone who was clearly not supposed to be there. 

Bucky'd tried to step in, but they made quick work of him. Carol felled him easily with a roundhouse kick to the face, even in stocking feet. "God," she spat, setting off to collect her heels from the corner when they'd confirmed the guy was down. "Can't get a break, can we? Who the hell is this Snap they want?"

"Dunno," Rhodes said, raising grey eyebrows in Bucky's direction. He loosened his tie and knelt to wrap the guy's hands with it. "Hey, Jack. Just missed the fun."

"Looks like. You want any help with that?"

"Pretty much got it." He pulled a face. "Marcus' brothers were here, but they went in to call the police, so unless you got a Cap suit on under there..."

Bucky shook his head grimly. "Better get gone. You want me to take care of that guy for you?"

"No," Rhodes said, looking suspicious of his use of the phrase 'take care of.' "But if your boyfriend isn't busy…"

"You want Steve?" 

"Could use a bit of extra muscle out here. He'd still be serving the groom, just tell him we're out here on Marcus' orders waiting for some surprise for Sam. It involves a lot of heavy lifting and that's the truth." Rhodes hoisted the guy easily over his shoulder and nodded at Carol to open the door for him.

It hadn't taken Bucky long to pick Steve's voice out from among the distant murmurs, and now he's found him and Sam bickering hennishly in some tiny back room. 

"Thank God," Sam says when Bucky pokes his head in the room. Steve fingers fidget helplessly with the tails of Sam's tie. Bucky smiles in spite of himself; Sam looks good. Really good. Bucky's not sure when he's seen him look so formal outside of cover or commendations. "Someone who can actually tie this goddamned thing."

"Is Steve crying already?" Bucky asks him, stepping inside.

"I'm not _crying_ ," Steve says nasally. "And I've almost got it."

He _is_ at least trying to blink through some mist, and he does not almost have it. 

Bucky steps up to drag Steve's hands gently away. "Step aside, genius."

"I know how to tie a tie," Steve gripes. He reaches to try again,but Bucky grabs his hands and brings them to his mouth instead. He presses a kiss to the knuckle of his thumb. God, but Steve's gorgeous; his own tie is lopsided and loose. 

Bucky reaches to adjust it, enamored. "They need you outside anyway," he murmurs. He winds up resetting Steve's collar while he's at it and Steve's mouth softens. Then Bucky wants to kiss him on top of it all. He fights for focus. "Some kind of… ah—"

Sam tuts impatiently beside them, eyeballing himself in the mirror. "I know about the surprise. Go on."

"But—"

"Trust me," Bucky interrupts. "You'll still be fulfilling your duties out there. I'll fix the groom."

"Groom doesn't need fixing," Sam grouses. "Tie needs fixing."

"I know what I said."

Steve looks between them, and Bucky touches his neck, just because he can. He knows how he's being. They've been balancing on twin axes of avoidance and devotion, circling each other as though magnetized for weeks. They don't discuss it; they give in to it constantly. It started earlier than the blowout, back when Bucky'd thought Steve was eaten by time, when Steve let Bucky shadow him for a day and then made the kind of love to him that was hard to forget. They've been slipping back into that needful passion ever since—the kind that reminds Bucky of the way things were a century past, when they were too afraid of what they were kindling to say it aloud. Talking always gets them into trouble. Naming it might condemn them. They've determined to fuck it out of their systems instead.

Bucky'd opened his eyes this morning to Steve's wedding clothes hanging over the closet door, then turned to see the man himself curled around a cluster of blankets. His hair stuck up in a million directions, breath pouching soft through an open mouth. His face was pushed against the mattress as if he'd eschewed the very concept of pillows since birth, and Bucky'd watched him a while, fighting whatever stubborn feeling's been haunting him for weeks. He'd woken Steve up as soft as he could and spent the next ninety minutes carefully edging him through bed-shaking orgasms, the last one building and lasting so long that Bucky'd gotten overwhelmed just watching him. 

He'd kissed the mist out of the corners of Steve's eyes and left him to doze while he took Burrito for a walk. He came home to find Steve just where he left him, looking downright small in that king-sized bed. That nameless feeling had caught up with him again—left him buzzing, electric. He'd taken a shower to drown it out, but it hadn't helped, and all day since then they've managed to hang off each other like a couple of star-crossed assholes just trying to deny opportunity to whatever tragedy might be lurking to push them apart. 

They keep showing their wounds. It all feels too open, impossible to stopper. Now Steve's standing in front of him wearing the same wedding clothes Bucky'd seen first thing this morning and there it is again, that nameless, pestering thing. 

It's embarrassing. Worse, something in the set of Steve's mouth tells him it's a shared affliction. Bucky brushes that stubborn mist from the corners of Steve's eyes again, and Steve's eyes crinkle as he smiles. That only makes it all the worse. "Go on," Bucky says, nodding him away. "They're in the alley. Try not to start any fights."

Steve looks at Sam, who distracts himself from his own reflection only long enough to nod his permission. "Me?" Steve says to Bucky as he sets toward the door. Their hands hook together as he passes by. "Please."

"Give us each day our daily bullshit," Bucky mutters after him, and Steve coughs a laugh; lets their arms grow outstretched, and then his hand is gone and he walks away without so much as a backward glance.

Bucky steps toward Sam while blowing out a slow breath, moving to untangle the mess Steve left. Sam gives him half a minute, which is longer than Bucky expected. 

"You alright?" he finally asks.

"I'm not the one getting married," Bucky says, deflecting.

Sam sighs at him, then tilts his head back in weary acceptance. "Thanks," he murmurs. "Tried to tie the thing myself, but my damn hands won't quit shaking."

Bucky frowns. "Nerves? Second thoughts?"

"Nah," Sam says. Bucky tips his head back to catch the smile on his face. "At this point it kinda feels like this day was a long time coming."

Bucky wraps the tie around itself and pulls, gentle. "Good."

For a while, there's no sound but distant murmuring from the depths of the building. But then, of course—

"What's going on with you and Steve?"

Bucky hangs his head. Of course Sam's choosing his wedding day to stick his nose into someone else's business. "This may shock you, Wilson," Bucky says slowly, "but me and Steve… we're shacking up."

"You don't say."

"Now I know I don't talk much about my orientation, but to be completely honest with you, Sam, there's nothing I really love more than a big, fat, juicy cock." 

"Here we go." 

"Now _Steve's_ —"

"You done?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did you not want me to overshare? I thought that's why you asked me a personal question."

"Both of you are acting like the world's ending—"

"That's a strong read."

"— _displaying emotion_ —"

"Court-martialable offense!"

"—in front of _people_ —"

"Well, sorry to inconvenience you."

Sam scowls at him. Bucky swallows a smile. 

"You sure there's nothing going on between you two?" 

In the end it is still hard to hide from Sam's discerning eye. "Nothing you don't already know about," Bucky says, trying for casual, but then his hands betray him. He winds up fumbling the tie, swears harshly, and pulls it out to start over again. "Forget about me—it's your wedding day, for God's sake. How's it going, how you feeling? Questions, concerns you want addressed before the ceremony?"

Sam sighs, but he doesn't push. "You got info on this big surprise?"

"Involves a bunch of muscle standing in the alleyway. That's about all I got." He meets Sam's eye. "You know this thing is coming, but not what it is?"

"Didn't want to know. Let the man make me happy. Guess that's part of my way of making him happy."

Bucky cocks an eyebrow. "Wow."

"Don't _wow_ me."

"Displaying emotion. In front of _people._ "

"You're not people."

"I'm in a unique position to strangle you with your matrimonial tie is what I am." 

"I'm not supposed to be sentimental on my wedding day?"

"You're sentimental on a daily basis."

"You take that back!"

Bucky smiles; wraps Sam's tie around itself, pulls it through one last time. "There," he mutters, adjusting the knot, relieved his mutinous hand didn't fumble the task a thousand times in the process. He claps Sam on either shoulder, suddenly fond. "Damn. Look at you."

Sam looks past Bucky and into the mirror and smiles at himself, maybe without meaning to. It could just be the mood of the day, but Bucky finds himself struck with feeling again. "So you really love that guy, huh?"

Sam takes a deep breath. "At this point I'd better."

"That's the spirit."

Sam looks at him, but they know what the other means. They spend a long few seconds riding the tricky tide between sincerity and mockery. 

"I'm proud of you," Bucky finally says, setting Sam's tie flat. "For finding the right…"

He doesn't need to say the rest. Sam nods, soft around the eyes. "Yeah," he says. "I am too."

The moment passes. Bucky finally steps aside, giving Sam full view of himself in the mirror. He watches as Sam shrugs into his apparel a little more completely, fussing with his posture and the cut of his suit. 

"Kinda wild how things turn out," Bucky says, idle.

"Yeah," Sam says distractedly. "Still kinda can't believe it wasn't you first."

"Me? First at what?"

"Getting married, dumbass."

Bucky hadn't expected that. The pause grows teeth. "What?" he sputters. "Married to _who_?"

Sam stares at him a second, then looks to the door. 

It's strange, how fast feeling breaks. Bucky turns on a dime, expecting to see Steve—but there's nobody there. 

That's some dirty fucking trick. Bucky laughs, hollow. "C'mon. You know better than that."

"Only thing I know is that neither one of you lives right without the other." He says it casual, like he hasn't somehow dropped a bombshell. "Seems as good a reason as any—"

"Jesus _fucking_ Christ, Wilson—"

"What's he doing now?" Steve says, and Bucky nearly jumps a foot in the air. God, but Steve's beautiful, he'd almost forgotten; he's got rosy cheeks and the rolled-up sleeves of a man who really has gotten into a brawl, yet he still somehow looks composed in his formal clothes. Bucky never wants to stop looking at him; never wants Steve to look another way. Wants this memorialized, somehow.

"He keeps fussing with his collar," Bucky mutters, forcing himself to look forward again. 

"I do not," says Sam. 

Steve just grins as he steps level, surveilling Sam as though impressed. "Wow."

"Not bad, right?"

"I'll admit it. That's a better job than I'd have done." Steve looks at Bucky with sparkling eyes and Bucky narrowly averts the impulse to reach out again. To preserve that smile, if only for a second.

"Years of practice," Bucky mutters, and it's true; Steve's been awful at tying ties for more than a century now. He'd tied Steve's tie for the first time at thirteen, and he'd tied it for him again as recently as this morning, even as Steve's hands had slid around his hips. Steve had pulled Bucky in for a lingering kiss and Bucky'd impressed them both by tying blind, looping the thing in on itself out of muscle memory alone, until Bucky'd been left to grasp at the closet door as Steve had taken him in his mouth right there in their wedding clothes.

"I'd better get back out there," Bucky hears himself saying, though his mind feels to be miles away. "Help people sit down, or…" He shakes his head. "Something. Sam, you need anything else?"

"Nah. I think I'm good."

Steve steps around him with a nod. "Nat and Maria weren't far behind."

"Okay," Bucky says, glad for a reason to get out of there. But just when he thinks he's gonna leave with his dignity intact, Sam pulls him bodily into a hug.

"Thank you," Sam says, with a fist at his back, and it only takes Bucky a second to hug him back just as fierce. 

"Yeah," he says, pulling back. He claps him on the shoulder with a shambling smile. "Count on me for a double windsor in a pinch."

"I meant for coming," Sam says, "but since avoidance is your core personality trait..."

"I'm gonna let that slide on account of it being your wedding day," Bucky says, stepping backwards toward the door, elbowing Steve gently on his way out the room. "See you in there." 

Steve's fingers brush against his palm, the way they always do, and it sinks in him, the easy gesture; the way it says goodbye without the word being said. Steve's hand is gone as fast as it came, and Bucky looks over his shoulder one last time to see his face turned away, cheeks rosy as he smiles at Sam. 

"You look better," Steve tells him, and Bucky forces himself to look away, to keep moving. "Nerves settle alright?"

"Steady as a rock," Sam replies, and he sounds happy; God, he sounds happy. "Think I just needed to yell at Barnes a minute. Now what exactly does Marcus have planned for me?" Sam's voice fades into the distance as Bucky sets down the hall. "Please just tell me it's not a flash mob."

  


  


  


Natasha has a flask. God fucking bless her, Natasha always has a flask.

"You fit this in your clutch?" Bucky asks. He's been nursing a beer at the sidelines for what feels like an hour, hoping no one will notice his concerted effort at staying antisocial. As far as he's concerned, he has perfectly good reasons for not mingling and making small talk. For one thing, the room's half-full of people who hate him on principle. Apparently Marcus tells his family everything, including his new husband's dirty laundry.

"What else would I put in there?" Natasha asks, leaning beside him against the lip of the table.

"A pistol?"

"Now, now. Would I bring a gun to my good friend Sam's wedding?"

"So the Bite's under the corsage."

"Please," she says dryly. "The Bite _is_ the corsage."

The liquor is tequila, of all fucking things. Bucky looks at the flask with a wince and a sudden, desperate need for limes. "You're gonna get us in trouble," he says, but doesn't hesitate to take another pull.

"Not gonna get rowdy on me, are you?"

"You know me," he says, handing back the flask.

"Rumour has it you used to be."

"Yeah? Steve telling stories again?"

"Just the one about the barfight where you punched a guy for brushing your shoulder on the way out."

"Oh, he never tells it—the guy didn't _brush_ my shoulder, for one thing. He was trying to unseat me."

"Uh-huh."

"For another, the guy was spitting slurs at us. Steve didn't hear it because he was too busy tirading about his day."

"He heard it, way he tells it," Natasha says. "He just didn't care."

Steve never had cared when it was him they were disrespecting. "Well," Bucky says. "One of us had to."

Natasha smiles. Then she falls silent, looking off and away to some corner of the hall. Bucky frowns, but he's content enough to lean in silence anyway, passing the flask between them, watching the crowd from afar.

"So you just hanging around me to avoid your ex-wife?" Bucky finally asks.

"Who?" Natasha says mildly, and Bucky smiles. "Actually, I saw you standing by yourself being pathetic and thought I'd join you."

"I'm not pathetic. How am I pathetic?"

"Well, for starters, there's this look on your face every time you catch a glimpse of Steve across the room like you've witnessed the world's best and last sunrise."

Oh, Jesus. He shouldn't have asked. "I'm avoiding a hundred people who want to know why I tried to get between the parties of this wedding at some point in the ancient past."

"No, you're staring at Steve constantly for the five seconds of eye contact he initiates every half hour when he looks for you back. Then he goes back to talking to people, and you kill more time by staring at him some more."

"No, I—that's not…"

She blinks at him innocently. "What are you doing, then?"

Bucky rubs a hand at his face. "Am I that obvious?"

"Yes," she says, but demurs when he looks alarmed. "Only to me, relax."

"God, I hate weddings."

"You and me both."

He swigs his beer and looks at her sidelong. "Not even better as an _honour guard_?"

"Look, I love Sam. I'd do anything for him. In fact, I wish he'd give me something to do." Her eyes widen. " _Anything._ Just to make me look less conspicuous while excusing myself from a sea of bleeding hearts." 

On the one hand, it is nice to see people rallying around Sam like this. Bucky dimly recalls that Sam was once whatever the falcon equivalent of a social butterfly was, years ago, before the demands of being Captain America started sapping his energy. Here, even in a crowd mostly comprised of Marcus' guests, Sam thrives; Bucky's not sure the last time he's seen him laugh this much or get so openly choked up. He looks right at home with Marcus' crew, in spite of the fact that they're a bunch of put-together debate club rejects whose primary joy in life seems to be shouting slogans of celebration so effusive that Bucky can't even tell if they're drunk or not. 

Sam's guests, meanwhile—at least half of them mutants and superheroes—seem to be taking their cue from Bucky and clumping sporadically together at the sidelines. Faced with those two options and the knowledge he can't skulk in the shadows forever, Bucky's mostly just thankful for his rediscovered capacity for getting drunk. 

"Well, at least there's no flashmob," he sighs.

"Don't jinx it," she says solemnly. "Dancing starts in twenty minutes."

Bucky makes a face and accepts the flask back when she offers it. "Your wedding was alright," he says. "Why can't more of them be like that? Five-minute ceremony, two-hour reception, everyone goes home. Efficient. Respectful of people's time."

"When was that?" she asks dryly.

He rolls his eyes. "Everyone was there, Natasha. We saw it, you can't pretend it didn't happen."

"Sounds like quite the affair. Sorry I missed it."

" _That_ level of denial, huh?"

"Can't deny what never happened."

Bucky smiles, but it flickers away in some melancholy drift. "Just seems a shame. You put too much of yourself into that thing to erase it from history."

Far from being comforting, this seems to be the wrong thing to say. Natasha's eyes flash across the hall, and Bucky realizes she's as bad as him—there's Maria, right where Nat's been looking, champagne flute in hand as she talks to Marcus' sister. The front of her suit must damn near halfway unbuttoned by now—just in statement, but the statement is clear.

"Still wasn't enough, I guess," Natasha says quietly. 

Now Bucky feels like an asshole. "I know that story," he sighs.

"I know you do."

They stand in the silence of shared understanding. "Hey, look on the bright side," Bucky offers. "With any luck she'll meet someone you initially can't stand but _can_ muster actual happiness for by the time they finally get married."

Natasha does smile, at least. She tips her flask in cheers. "Here's hoping."

They watch the crowd a while longer. 

"So you and Marcus are getting along?" Natasha asks.

"Actually, not bad. Steve—they get along. So that helps." Bucky winces. "We, uh… we've actually been going to their house pretty regularly for dinner."

"You're joking." 

"Wish I was. We've figured out how not to kill each other, anyway—oh, don't make a face like I've told you something dangerous. No one would believe you if you told them."

"I know," she says. "Your secret's safe with me," but then she throws her head back and gives a cackling spiel of laughter, sarcastic enough to put a smile on Bucky's face. 

"Okay," he says, placating.

"God. That's terrifyingly domestic of you."

"Isn't it?"

"And you enjoy it?"

"Actually, I do." His eyes find Steve instinctively in the crowd. "Must be getting soft in my old age."

Natasha follows his gaze; looks at Bucky, looks at Steve, looks at Bucky all the harder. "Hmm."

"No hmm. Situation normal."

"Okay," she says, but doesn't believe him. She takes the flask back out of his hand, and at first doesn't say anything more. But then — "Should we be thinking about winding the mission down?"

"No," he says, fast. 

Natasha nods and purses her lips. "Well, you were always good at living in two worlds."

 _No,_ he thinks. _Not now. Not lately._ "Life of an Avenger."

"Maybe. Some of us have a harder time planting a foot in the real world than you do."

Bucky shakes his head. "You say that like I had a choice. I had an anchor." He nods at Steve across the hall. "A stubborn one, with a killer right hook."

"I guess that's true."

But—is it anymore? Steve is so still and so quiet these days, moving through life like a silent goliath. He seems, in ways, so unlike the Steve that Bucky remembers. Sam used to claim he'd been like this in the early Avenger days, and Bucky believes it now. Did Bucky misremember him? Has he always been like this? Had he valorized Steve's fight over the years without him? Now they live in the grave magnetism brought on by this quiet, and it's far from bad. Every time Steve catches his eye and flashes that smile at him across the hall, Bucky's struck with that longing, a belief in something that's hard to name. It's the same thing he feels when they start making out instead of doing anything else—like they're unearthing what was buried a century ago for safekeeping.

Only Bucky's making him goddamned miserable—isn't he? Isn't that what's causing the quiet in the first place?

Isn't it Bucky who's supposed to be the anchor now?

"I know why I'm standing here," Natasha says, pulling Bucky out of his head. "Why are you?"

Bucky doesn't bother repeating excuses. He takes a breath into his chest and lets it sit, takes the flask out of her hand. "I think," he begins, but it cuts off; he shakes his head and tries again. "I think…"

It cracks again, much harder. He swallows it down, God help him. It's this goddamned wedding doing this to him—making him like this. Everyone within a five-mile radius had gotten teary-eyed when Marcus had played Sam some goddamn piano serenade, and now it's fucking stuck to him. Like goo.

"Whoa," says Natasha. Now the goo's so prevalent she can see it on his face.

"Fuck." He turns his back to the music and crowd. There he stands, waiting for something. 

Natasha waits with him and doesn't say a word. 

He can't explain it, no matter how hard he tries, God knows he wishes he knew how—but he's 120 in four months' time. There's a course to these things. He's carved the life of a man out of an assassin's design, but that doesn't change the fact that the longer he lives, the more death he leaves in his wake.

"You know, all the fucked-up times we've been split up throughout the years," Bucky finally grits out, swallowing hard, forcing himself to lean into the awful feeling that's chased him all day—"the disappearances, the wars, the deaths from on high… I don't think either one of us realized how much worse it would be to split up," he takes a breath, "the old-fashioned way."

Natasha's disbelief hits like a wave. She grips at his arm. "Barnes."

"You know, he told me six months ago that he was always gonna fight me on it. And that I knew it." He looks at her. "He was right. That killer right hook—"

"Stop this."

"I think I should have let him go to California."

For the longest time, Natasha doesn't say anything. When she does, she's leaned in close, as though trying to make sure he understands. 

"Are you doing everything you can?" she says, grave, and it doesn't sound cruel; it's not a jab, the way it is from others. "What is this worth to you?"

"Not the mission," he says. He wishes to God he felt another way.

"So take stock of the rest. Is Steve really the thing you can live without?"

He holds her eye. He isn't sure what to say.

Somewhere behind him, the lights go down. The music dies. Bucky groans as he figures out what's coming before Marcus' brother even picks up the mic. "Thanks for your patience," he says. "We'd like to invite Marcus and Sam front and centre. Think we got some kind of first dance bullshit to get out of the way before the rest of us can bust up the place—"

"Think anyone will notice if we just leave?" Bucky asks, brow pinching. 

"Well, he might." Natasha tips her head behind him. 

Bucky stares at her, hoping she might be kidding, but then he turns to see Steve stepping toward him. "Oh no," Bucky mutters. 

Steve just grabs his hand and looks to Natasha. "Borrow him a minute?"

"He's all yours," says Natasha, slipping the flask behind her back.

"I can't dance," Bucky says.

Steve just shakes his head and shuffles backward, pulling him along. "Nice try."

Bucky follows, feet dragging, until _I Hadn't Anyone Til You_ starts to fill the hall. "I can't even swing to this," he gripes, but by then they've gotten where they're going; Steve snaps him in with surprising skill. 

"I like to slow dance at weddings," Steve murmurs. He's right up against him, his body a hard, warm line, and Bucky leans against him, helpless not to. Their hands slide together in the air; Steve's left sets flush in the small of his back. His face stays close as they sway gently in sync.

"Aren't we stealing the spotlight?" Bucky mutters against Steve's lips, but suddenly this doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

"No." Bucky can feel it the word reverberate in him, through him. "Sam wanted us to embarrass ourselves with him."

"That's great," Bucky says, but it doesn't sound like a complaint. "Thank you so much for involving me in that."

"Mmhmm," Steve hums, like he knows better; and he does. Bucky's close enough to smell the remnants of faded cologne, the benign salt of sweat on his skin, and it takes him over; he presses his face close in the crook of Steve's neck and breathes, hand fisting at the back of his shirt.

_And through my lonely heart demanding it,_  
_Cupid took a hand in it—_

He drags his fingers at the back of Steve's neck and falls, headfirst, into the feeling he's been avoiding.

_I hadn't anyone—_  
_till you._

The song fades into another. They don't break apart for a long time.

  


  


  


Rhodes is in Stark's office when—

Rhodes…?

"Oh," Bucky says, stopping dead in his tracks. "Shit. Sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt."

Rhodes glances over his shoulder and stands swiftly, as though bodily denying he was ever there. "You didn't," he says, looking irritated with Stark as ever, but then adds to Stark in contravention as he leaves, "We're not finished." He giving Bucky a passing clap on the shoulder and doesn't look back at Stark at all.

"Yeah," Stark says, hollow. He leans over himself with his elbows at his knees. "Got it."

The door shuts automatically in Rhodes' wake. Bucky stands there a second in awkward reckoning while Stark ignores him, eyes on the floor.

"Pair of you talking again?" Bucky asks, a bit carefully. "That's a good sign."

"Yeah," Stark says, still sounding grim, then runs a rough hand over his face. Then he jolts awake, as though he's only just realizing Bucky's there. "What are you doing here? Do we have an appointment? Is there a meeting? Am I late for something?"

"No. Actually I—"

"No we don't have an appointment or no I'm not late?"

"Both. Neither. It's not important. I just came to ask—" 

But then his heart pounds in his chest so hard it cuts him off, like his ruddy mortality's putting up some last hurrah. Stark stares at him, spreading his hands when Bucky doesn't go on. "Cough it up, Shiro, I don't have all day."

Bucky opens his mouth, but it closes again. He shuts his eyes hard and swallows his pride. "I need," he begins, but it stops in his throat. "I need a favour."

"What's the matter with you? Indigestion? Food poisoning? Struggling under the weight of your mortal sins?"

Bucky exhales through his nose. "You're no help."

"Trying to lighten the mood. Seriously, what's wrong with you? Arm troubles? Heart troubles? We can work on getting that valve replaced, if you're worried about—"

"I need you to run me through what would need to happen before I got the serum again," Bucky says in one rapid breath. " _If_. If I decided to... What kind of tests you'd need to do, what I should expect. Whether it's even fucking worth it, given—"

But from the look on Stark's face, Bucky'd only needed to ask. He gestures Bucky into the chair in front of him and snaps his fingers, energetically arranging four displays that appear in the air. "I mean, it'd definitely be worth it," Stark says, without bothering to hear the rest. He looks like he's been preparing this for months. "It's a more potent formula than your last dose, this being the real Stark-Erskine enchilada, so you might experience some unexpected energy, a slight increase in size, a fairly considerable increase in strength, that kind of thing. Your boyfriend is a pretty good litmus test for what the end result's supposed to look like, though your case is obviously gonna be different because of the, you know, considerable synthetic replacement angle. We should probably do a few tests to check for bloodflow, throw in a couple scans, maybe a dye test or two just to find out what kind of function regain you should and should not expect, but even if there was some procedure it'd be smart to do beforehand—minor, really, infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things, just to remove a dying muscle or tendon—"

" _Stark._ "

"What?"

Bucky breathes, nostrils flaring, hands clenched into horrid fists. "Is it _worth it._ "

Stark stares at him, honest. Neither of them moves for a long time.

"I don't know," Stark finally says.

Bucky nods. Stark scratches his chin, studying him. Then, finally, he scrolls through his displays until there's only one showing. "Tell you what. You sit down, I'll pour us some drinks, we'll order Thai food, and we'll go through it step by step. Then you can decide what's worth it to you. No harm, no foul, pal. Not in information."

Bucky stares. "That's… magnanimous of you."

Stark almost looks humble. It's a good look on him. He should wear it more often. "You were there when Rhodey was sick," Stark says. "I can return the favour." He holds up a finger. " _One_ time."

Bucky stares for a while, then finally sits down. "I don't exactly plan to do this a lot, I guess," he says into his hands—and then he accepts it when Stark pours him a scotch and settles in let his mind get changed.

  


  



	4. Jinxes and Other Misunderstandings

  


Every time Steve jumps ahead, there's something new to get used to. Cell phones. Security states. Facial meshes to let you emulate anyone. 

If the gains are intense, the losses are exponentially worse.

Mourning New York was a protracted affair. He felt perpetually out of place, overwhelmed, for years. It didn't matter how much he drew it or sprinted around it or connected with its people; it wasn't his home. The foundation of what he knew was still there, but Steve couldn't see it—it was buried under 70 years of war and precarity masquerading as growth, beyond reclamation, beyond recognition, built over and demolished until stubborn memories were all that remained.

Grieving is different this time. It's less total. He has friends; they are, roughly, as he remembers. Well-done sketches of the people he used to know. He's good with abstraction. In return, they're good with his assumptions. He's gently corrected twice a day. No one begrudges him his ignorance to the facts. His mind has shifted to form a card catalogue of this world's subtle differences. Adjusting has been work, but hasn't drained him as totally as it did the first time.

Bucky is… Bucky. He's always Bucky. Thank God for that. Bucky's apartment is perfect, wonderfully cluttered, wonderfully _him_... but it's Bucky's. It's not theirs; not Steve's. He is a guest in Bucky's life. 

Sometimes it's hard not to remember that there's no time left for them to start again.

Steve's spent the last months fighting to get used to Bucky's world, to his differences. He is Bucky, always Bucky, but he's a Bucky who's gotten a little older; he's more fragile, if subtly. He's more likely to shrug things off; more likely to let Steve in, but even less likely to talk about anything at length. Things don't fester long with him, even when they should. It's a throwback to the Bucky of yore—his ease harder-earned, more stubbornly maintained, but it's there. _He's_ there. A hundred years of war and precarity masquerading as growth and Bucky's become cunning, more stubborn, much harder to knock down—but himself. Always himself. The foundation of him can never be built over or demolished as far as Steve's concerned. Steve can take that shambling body into his hands, scan his fingers along slopes of sinew and steel, and know these 200 pounds carry the soul of the same welterweight he'd fallen in love with ninety-nine years ago.

There are differences. Bucky's body is broader, stiffer. His muscles are hard and immovable, as though calcified from decades of use. He struggles to put things on the highest shelf if he extends his left arm without much thinking about it.

Or he... _did._

Some instinct's been building in Steve for days, slow, barely recognizable. But now, watching Bucky lying on the floor and playing with Burrito, he realizes he hasn't had cause to command Bucky down for a backrub in days.

Steve blinks at him. One hand's still wrapped around the glass he'd been unloading from the dishwasher. Just like that, instinct evolves into suspicion. Things have been intense between them for weeks on end, lust blistering under the surface of a silent, nameless turmoil, and Steve's found himself thankful for the ways Bucky's hands have found him—even as they avoid naming the issues aloud, Bucky's touch is certain, confident, never shy. There may be walls of silt shifting between them, but never physically. That foundation stays strong, their skin always honest.

Some kinds of honesty still demand words.

"Bucky."

Bucky looks up at him, then down at the dog again, humming some reply. He's been so damned elusive. Steve's barely had time to ask him how he is. He's been characteristically cagey about what he's been doing, but oddly enough Steve has no sense that he's been in combat. For the past couple weeks, he's seemed distant, but calm. He comes home wearing the same clothes he left in. He's not tired so much as he is distracted, sidestepping Steve's prompts for details with practiced deflection. 

It doesn't feel grave. Paperwork, he's said—easy, with an unwrinkled brow. An annual review of some kind. Steve didn't buy it, and told him as much. Bucky'd just looked at him like he was picking a fight over nothing and changed the subject. He did so with a cheerfulness that Steve still couldn't parse. Steve would take all this as just another quirk of living with Bucky Barnes, illegible since birth, except…

Except his eyes have seemed clearer. He hasn't been as tired. Steve had woken up this morning to find Bucky already long-since awake, playing his guitar for what must've been the first time in a month and a half.

The fight gathers in Steve's fingertips.

" _Bucky._ "

Bucky raises his chin at the edge in Steve's tone. He shambles to his feet, hand patting loosely at his leg. "Yeah."

"You didn't..." Steve's hand is still wrapped around that glass he can't put down. Some part of his brain tells him he's crazy and stops him there, but when Bucky slides into the barstool across from Steve, he clasps his hands together and looks at him in just such a way—

And Steve _knows_.

"You didn't," he says, mouth going dry.

For a long, strange second, Bucky looks humble. He swallows, looks at the counter, thumb kneading circles into the palm of his prosthetic. "Yeah," he finally says, looking up after what feels like an age. "Steve, I did."

Steve blinks. The moment hangs. His heart pounds in him so hard he thinks he might burst. 

Bucky looks sincere, and sounds it, too; he looks down at his hands in nervous turns. Steve believes it. All at once he has to believe it. 

He leans hard against the counter, glass sliding across its surface. "Oh."

"I," Bucky says, but then cuts off when Steve looks at him. "I didn't..." 

Worse than nervous, he seems… uncertain. "You didn't want," Steve guesses, "to tell me?"

"I didn't know how. I..." He coughs a laugh that Steve can't read. "Steve, I—"

But something snaps deep in his sternum. Steve turns away, hands in his hair, walking away from him—just away. He feels Bucky's incredulous eyes on his back, the bewilderment of his silence; tension cloys. Steve's stomach twists. 

"When?" Steve finally asks, turning back around. Something—panic, muted—rushes in his ears. He presses a hand against his mouth, hoping to calm the churning, but it doesn't help. "When did you…" 

The words turn to mulch in his mouth. He licks his lips to no effect. 

"Tuesday last," Bucky says, looking at him warily.

Steve jaw falls open. "Last _week_?"

"You are... _happy_ ," Bucky asks. There's an edge to it that borders on dangerous. "Right?"

"You hid this from me for _nine days_?"

"You wanted this," Bucky says, sharp. "Tell me you wanted this."

Steve's hands fold over and press into fists by his sides. "Bucky," he rasps. He swallows hard. "Did— _you_?"

Bucky seems to have nothing to say. Steve stands, waiting. He sees a steel in Bucky's eyes he doesn't like or understand. 

This isn't right. Nothing about this feels right.

"Steve," Bucky finally says. It's so low it shakes. "For six—goddamn—months, all you've been doing is telling me to take this godforsaken serum. And now that I have—"

"For six months, Bucky, you've been telling me it's not up for discussion!"

"I told you I wasn't considering it. Then I was."

"Why? What changed? When did this happen? You stood right where I am now, _four weeks ago_ , Bucky, and told me it was _impossible,_ that I shouldn't even bring it up. Then you turned on a dime and made it happen without so much as mentioning it?"

Bucky's eyelids flicker. "I didn't realize you were the arbiter of my decisions."

"You don't get to do that. You hid this from me for _nine days—_ "

"I admit that I didn't communicate well—"

"—and for nine days, you knew I was _suffering_. You let that happen. You chose not to say anything. You knew, for _days_ , that every time I watched you walk out that door, I thought there was a chance you might not come home—"

"I think I'm pretty clear about when I'm going on-mission—"

"Not even just nine days! Longer than that. You made the premeditated decision to make this happen, then decided again and again not to tell me you made it—"

"You wanted this," Bucky says, voice shaking. "I did this for _you_ , you rotten bastard, how about showing some fucking appreciation?"

It's a blow to the gut. Bucky blinks, as though he felt the impact just as hard. The implication hangs heavy: _This is your fault._

"Is that the only reason you did it?" Steve asks, tight. "Because I—what, Bucky? What actually tipped it? Did I finally shed enough tears for you? Swallow enough of your come, what?"

"Jesus _Christ_. Steve—this decision was mine to make. Alone."

"You just worked so hard to keep it secret for sport and entertainment."

Bucky shakes his head, slow. "You can be a real narcissist sometimes, you know that?"

"I get the message, Bucky. I don't factor into your life."

"Oh, cut the martyr act! I don't know why I'm surprised you're pulling this shit. Listen to me carefully, Steve, listen to my words: this wasn't your _decision_."

"You don't hide a decision like this from someone you care about."

"You do when it's not—his—fucking—decision."

"For _nine days_?"

"That—" Bucky licks his lips, anger flickering briefly away. "It wasn't supposed to go this way."

"No," Steve says. "It really wasn't."

Bucky stares. The tightness in Steve's chest closes in. 

"I wanted," Steve says, but the breath runs out of him without any words. "All I've been asking for is for you to let me in. I've just wanted to be part of your life, Bucky. And you just—"

Steve waits; counts the seconds in his head, until he remembers how to swallow again, but Bucky splays his arms wide before he can finish the sentence. "I'm trying," he says. "Honest to God, Steve, that's all this thing is about. You think I would've done this if I didn't want you part of my life?"

And that is a comfort. But it's also the exact goddamned problem.

Steve can't think, he needs air. He pushes past Bucky toward the door, but Bucky catches his wrist before he can go. 

His grip is so strong; he's so strong again, God. 

"Let go of me," Steve mutters, but far from being menacing it shakes.

Bucky just stares at him, open, unflinching, face held too close to his. Bucky's so foreign to him now, too lain bare: too old or too new, unknowable both ways. "Tell me you wanted this," Bucky grits out, and even as Steve's standing here drowning, Bucky's breath hits his lips and all he wants to do is lean in to taste him. "Don't walk out of here with me believing I did this for nothing."

Steve blinks at him, swallowing hard, and then takes Bucky's face in both hands and _leans_ ; rubs their noses flush, hands tangling in Bucky's hair. For a second, he gives in: to Bucky; to his ill-begotten immortality; to the fact that Bucky chased this down—for him.

"Yeah, Bucky," Steve murmurs. "I wanted it."

Bucky's hand is fisted at his shoulder, his other hard against his chest. "You _wanted_ it," he repeats, low. "But you don't want it anymore."

He presses his forehead to Bucky's brow, hard, inconsolable, before wrenching away and grabbing his shoes and keys. "I wanted you," he tells him; "all I was asking for was you," and then he's halfway down the stairwell, door left open behind him, before Bucky can eke out another word.

  


  


  


Marcus takes one look at Steve on his way in the door and recoils. 

Then he turns to Sam. "Jack crisis?"

Sam just keeps on whisking his cake. "Is there any other kind?"

Steve had started walking, numb, without a destination, until he found himself hours later standing in front of Sam's building in Harlem. He stared despondently up at his window, unsure even whether Sam and Marcus were back from their honeymoon, until Sam happened to glance outside from his living room and saw Steve staring across the street.

"The hell's the matter with you?" Sam yelled, propping the window open in a pinstriped apron.

"Bucky got the serum," Steve said. It didn't carry; Sam didn't seem to hear him, but he must have at least gotten that it was about Bucky, because he started aggressively buzzing Steve into the building. 

Eventually Steve put two and two together and opened the door during a particularly long note in Sam's morse-code cover of Stevie Wonder. By the time Steve had trudged up all those stairs, Sam was waiting for him in the hall with a very tall glass of whiskey. 

"What'd he do now?" Sam asked, propping the apartment door open with one foot.

"Serum," Steve said. He took the glass and collapsed into the nearest chair.

"Still won't take it?"

"No," Steve said, hollow. "He already did."

Sam stared, unmoving, one hand still on the doorknob. " _What?_ "

"Oh," Steve said. "So he didn't tell anyone?"

"Are you _serious_?"

"Nine days ago."

" _Nine days ago_?"

Steve nodded like his head was on a string. "Tuesday last."

"And— _you_ didn't even know?"

"I had to guess," Steve told him, and so it continued, Steve explaining himself in short, subdued sentences, Sam eventually breaking from his statuesque shock to finish some attempt at making a chocolate cake in relative silence. They spoke only occasionally, Steve occupying himself mostly with enforcing the burn of the whiskey down his throat, Sam stirring his batter for what must have been way too long to be viable, until Marcus came home and found them like this.

"So what'd he do now?" Marcus asks, sliding his briefcase up on the counter.

"Oh God." Steve shuts his eyes. "Is there more booze?"

"Cheap or smooth?" Sam asks blankly.

"The cheaper the better."

"Help yourself. Jack in the cabinet." 

Watching Steve concertedly not moving, Marcus eventually sighs and fishes the bottle out for him. "We talking cut his hair without saying anything bad," he asks, "or knock over a liquor store for petty cash level bad?"

"Bucky wouldn't knock over a liquor store," Steve says in monotone. "He'd sneak in after it was closed."

"Obviously," Marcus says dryly, slamming the bottle of whiskey on the table. Steve takes it gratefully. "So definitely the hair thing, then."

Steve just looks at Sam. Sam rolls his eyes. "Jack got the serum without telling anyone."

Marcus' jaw falls open. "He _what_ now?"

"Just coming out today, happened nine days ago."

"He did this, and didn't tell anyone about it for _nine days_?"

"That seems to be the situation."

Marcus lets out a low whistle and moves into the kitchen, glancing an affectionate hand at Sam's back in greeting. "Well, alright."

Sam tilts his bowl in Marcus' direction as he passes. "Is this supposed to look like this?"

"I think so."

"You _think_ so."

"I don't know, husband, you're the cake expert."

"I am not the cake expert," Sam says. "That's some slander you're trumping up. Just because you don't want to bake this cake yourself—"

"I would bake it, but one of us has to work for a living." 

"I work!"

"You fly around."

"So when I'm healthy I just 'fly around,' but when I'm injured I'm 'risking my life' and 'too old for this'?"

"You'd think after fifteen years I'd understand him," Steve tells the empty air. "What's it gonna take? Fifteen more? A lobotomy?"

"Now there's an idea," Marcus says, leaning against the counter, beer in hand. "So he just sprung this on you out of the blue?"

"I figured it out on my own."

Marcus shakes his head, like he doesn't understand either. Two other people reacting the way he did—at least Steve's not crazy. "Why the secrecy?"

"I don't know," says Steve, but the lie rings hollow even in his own ears. 

Marcus must hear it too, because he stares at Steve too long to be comfortable. Then he cranes over his shoulder to where Sam's resumed his effusive whisking. "And how are you doing with all this?"

"Me?" says Sam, stirring furiously. "I'm fine."

"Uh-huh," Marcus says. "So you both know what this is about and just don't want to admit it, huh."

Steve just stares into the middle distance. Sam, meanwhile, keeps diligently stirring.

Marcus sighs and settles in, as though expecting this to take a while. "You don't get to blame yourself for another man's decisions," he says gravely. "Not even his."

Steve waits to feel something, anything other than uneasy; something other than the thought that he's caused this collateral. But nothing else comes. "He," Steve croaks, but it's as far as he gets.

"He made this decision," Marcus butts in. "I might try to tune that man out to the fullest extent of my abilities, but if there's one thing I know about him, it's that he doesn't let anyone tell him what to do. He wouldn't have done this if it wasn't the best decision _for him_. It seems to me like both you and Mr. Whisk over there think that you have some kind of authority over this situation just because you've wanted this outcome for so long." He looks from Steve to Sam and back again, eyebrows steepling. "And here it was made without you. If I had to guess, I'd say that's exactly why he went off and did it on his own, rather than involve you knuckleheads in it. Trying to avoid this exact reaction."

"He did it because I," Steve says, then has to pause to breathe. "Because I pushed," he manages. "Not because he wanted it. But because I did."

"Is that what he told you?"

"As a matter of fact."

Marcus rolls his eyes. "Look—I wasn't there, and it's not like I care about this asshole the way the two of you do. But I'd bet either he wasn't speaking well, or you weren't listening. In the three years I've known this man, he's never done anything but _just exactly_ what he wants, and nothing else. If he did this without telling anyone he was doing it, that reinforces to me that he was trying to _avoid_ other people feeling guilt over this decision—a directive you are now disobeying."

Steve opens his mouth to respond, but Sam gets there first. "Hang on, Counselor. Are you actually _defending_ Jack?"

"Hell no," Marcus proclaims, "and if you tell anyone I am, I will deny it. You know I don't condone secrets, and that part I still don't understand. But Jack doing this on his own without telling anyone?" Marcus shrugs. "It's a life-and-death decision. If he'd brought anyone along—even Steve—he'd have made his living or dying somebody else's responsibility, and from what I can tell that man wouldn't accept another person's responsibility for his life if it killed him to refuse it. From where I am, he did everyone a favour by not involving anyone else. If he ever came to regret the call, it would have made you complicit in his mistake." Marcus shrugs, like it's all so obvious. "If I were you, I'd reconcile myself with the fact that he's chosen to live, apparently just to spend more time gracing our lives with his scintillating presence, and start building my reactions on gratitude. Because I get the outrage over the secret; really, I do. But don't begrudge a good thing its bad timing." Marcus looks between them, like he's not quite sure where to direct his critique. "Barnes just got a stay of execution here, but somehow this feels more like a wake."

Something—finally—breaks through Steve's stranglehold on feeling. He props a stabilizing hand at his mouth. Realization wraps at his throat—a rising tendril.

"Is this setting in now?" Marcus asks. "You figure out Jack's out there thriving?"

Relief hits slow, cascades over his skin: an electric current, burning through him from his hairline down. Bucky's not dying. He's not gonna leave him. 

"Oh," Steve whispers, running a hand over his face.

"Yeah," says Marcus.

"Damn it." He tries to breathe; it all winds up shaky. "I guess I just… I still—why hide it? Why hide a good—I just don't—"

"Oh," Sam says, loud. Across the kitchen, he's finally stopped stirring, having long since propped himself up with both hands on the counter instead. "Did he tell you?" Sam asks, when Steve looks over.

"No…" Steve narrows his eyes. "I would have remembered if he'd told me something like this, Sam."

"No, I mean—did he tell you why he didn't tell you. Because…" But then Sam pauses and purses his lips, like he's not sure what to say. "You know his communication skills are only about as good as your impulse control."

"Hey," Steve protests. 

"Once he told you, did you actually stick around long enough for him to figure out how to explain himself? Or were you out the door before he had a chance to get his thoughts in line?"

Steve stares. "Well… maybe he tried, but I don't—"

Sam just sighs at him, harsh. He picks up his bowl again, looking at Steve like he doesn't know what to do with him. "I dunno if you noticed how he was being at our wedding," Sam says, voice hard, "but I have it on pretty good authority that he was spooked to hell about losing you. Now if you ask me—me being someone, by the way, who's been on the 'take the serum' front lines a lot longer than you have—you were always gonna be the only thing to make it happen." He looks Steve in the eye like there's something he's to convey unsaid. "In six years, I couldn't do it. Natasha couldn't do it. Maria couldn't, Clint couldn't, Rhodes couldn't, Stark couldn't. But you succeeded. That's not a bad thing."

"It's just—" Steve sighs and rubs at his eyes. "I'm just always gonna feel like I forced his hand now. That's the only reason I can think of for why he wouldn't—"

"You want to know why?" Sam interrupts. "My advice, Steve, is to shut the hell up and let him tell you." He stares Steve down like he's a toddler in trouble; then, as quick as he found it, he lets his tone drop, instead tipping the bowl back in Marcus' direction. "You sure this looks right?"

"If I had to guess," Marcus says, looking obligingly, "I'd say you mixed it too long. Gonna be too dense."

"I knew you knew," Sam mutters. He throws the bowl down and grabs a fresh one from the cupboard, snatching at a packet of sugar. "Pretending like you don't know cakes. You've got an opinion on every damn thing."

"I don't know cakes, but I know stress baking when I see it," Marcus says. "Don't throw it out, we can eat it ourselves."

"Why don't you make it yourself if you know so much?"

"I just worked eight hours! Plus I got a bunch more work to do tonight getting _your friends_ off their menace charges—we were only gone a week, Sam, how the hell'd they accumulate these so fast?"

"How come this line of argument only comes out when you want to get out of doing something?"

"You make me move to the suburbs and you'll be making a lot more cakes, by the way."

Sam puts the sugar down to pour all of his energies into looking at Marcus like he's out of his mind. "What kind of alien logic is that, Mark?"

"Neighbourhood bake sales," Marcus says, matter-of-fact. "Gifts for neighbours. Block parties. We are a black, gay couple, Sam Wilson, plus one of us is a superhero, and this time I don't mean me. You and me trying not to draw attention to ourselves is gonna involve a whole lot of cakes and casseroles. We got a whole Stepford montage to memorize, and that's just to _qualify_ for suburban membership."

"I'm not trying to move us to goddamn Montauk! All I want is a yard and a grill."

"Sam, I'm not leaving Harlem."

"Then I'm not retiring!"

Marcus nods toward Steve. "What the hell's your friend smiling about?"

Steve _is_ smiling. He hadn't even realized. "How was the honeymoon?" he asks, once they turn their attentions to his presence in the room.

"Good," they say in unison, and seem to silently decide to leave it there.

"Good," Steve says. They've already forgotten him; the exchange has left them gazing at each other instead.

"You gonna thank me for making this cake for your niece?" Sam asks.

"I already thanked you for making this cake for my niece," Marcus replies.

"You gonna thank me properly this time?" says Sam, hooking a finger in Marcus' collar, and Steve's left to politely shield his eyes with the sudden and rude reminder that he's managed to impose himself on a newlywed couple to help him with a relationship crisis of his own design.

"Okay," he says, getting up from his chair. "Don't let me interrupt. Think he's still at home?"

"Diner, more likely," Sam mutters, barely parting from Marcus.

Steve nods. "I'll get out of your hair. Thanks for the whiskey and the, uh, perspective. I guess. Enjoy your… dense… cake." He waves a hand, suddenly embarrassed, turning to the door without further ado.

"Steve," Sam says. "We're not gonna fuck the cake. It's important to me that you know that."

"Hey, man, to each their own," Steve says, but he manages to turn back once he's halfway out the door. "You look happy," he tells them, smiling again. "Both of you. Married life looks good on you."

Marcus boasts his chest with unmistakable pride. "Thank you, Steve," he says sincerely, but Sam only drops his smile with a sudden faux-sternness. 

"You making fun of my apron?"

"Not at all," Steve says. "Actually aprons are pretty convenient for—"

"Oh my God," Sam shouts, throwing a roll of paper towel after him as Steve blocks it with the door. "Shut the hell up! Putting on that shy act when you see us kissing like you aren't the grossest man alive. Goddamn national menace. Get out of my house!"

  


  


***

  


  


Bucky spends much less time than he'd like reorganizing the store room. It's not time that's the problem; it's the store room. It's too neat, too together. He's here too much. He's supposed to be overwhelmed by this kind of thing. He has too much goddamn energy to be on top of things like this. 

Bucky takes stock of his progress and reorganizes again. An hour later, everything's so perfect that disrupting anything would constitute making a mess.

He's a hair's breadth from bouncing off the walls. Patch notes for the goddamn serum: overactive in case of Steve Rogers. He cleans the alley behind the diner, yells at some shady-looking fed-type fuckers trying to scope out the alley, then spends about fifteen minutes punching the shit out of the heavy bag he put up in the back room four years ago and stopped using when his arm started going out. One solid kick and it gets ripped off its moorings. Enough plaster falls from the ceiling that Bucky thinks he probably shouldn't try putting it back up until he's used to his own strength again, unless he wants to renovate.

It's not like he preferred the constant fatigue. It's not like he enjoyed the nagging pain, his declining motor skills, the intrusive thoughts about how he's wasting into nothing. But post-serum life has its own obstacles, Steve's bullshit notwithstanding: he'd forgotten the way one burst of adrenaline means he can't sit still for the next five hours.

His beloved diner, source of distracting busywork for most of the last six years, has betrayed him in his time of need. His employees are too good at this. Someone should be disciplined for this. Briefly Bucky considers tearing the place apart himself just so he'd have something to do, and if that doesn't signal that it's time to get out of his goddamn head, nothing will. 

He shoulders his way into the dining room, not bothering to conceal his frustration as he passes behind Laura and grabs the coffee pot off the burner. "Go home if you want," he says. Laura just watches him pass with an affected indifference. "I'll pay you for the shift."

"You say that now."

He frowns and spreads his hands, keeping a precarious grip on the coffee pot as he walks backward toward Lonnie. "Do I run this place or not?"

She only looks at him, like he's somehow annoyed her. Christ, he can't go two minutes without unknowingly stepping in shit today. Bucky turns and sets around the corner—

Steve looks up at him, hunched over in a booth.

Bucky drags to a halt. He blinks, unmoving. Steve swallows hard, brow pinched hard in the centre, looking like the world's most worried baby bird.

"Can we talk?" he asks, quiet.

He might look repentant, but Bucky doesn't want to know why. He turns away again, sets the pot on the counter, and leans hard over both hands.

"Oh," Laura says, indifferent again. "By the way, your boyfriend is here."

Bucky scowls. "You might've mentioned that before."

"You still want me to leave?"

"No. Someone has to talk to him."

She looks at him like he's an insect on her shoe. "I figured as much."

"What'd you figure?"

"You are only this much of an idiot when the other idiot is involved."

Bucky glares at her a second, but she shrugs it off. He leans back instead, peering around the corner again to see if Steve's still there. It seems that he is: still hunched over his coffee, looking pathetically in Bucky's direction, as though checking to see if he's coming back.

At least doesn't look like he's rambling for a fight. "How long has he been here?" Bucky sighs, leaning forward again.

"For _ever._ "

"Forever like ten minutes, or forever like an hour?"

She ignores him in favour of picking at her nails. "What's wrong with him this time?"

"I... told him something he didn't want to hear. Looking for a ballpark figure, here. Was it still light out?"

"Are you dying again?"

Bucky must only pause for a fraction of a second, but it's still enough for her to narrow her gaze. "Actually, I… quit dying a while ago," he admits. God, does he ever hope that's gonna get easier the more he does it.

Laura grabs at his wrist. "You didn't."

Usually she barely acknowledges his existence, let alone grabs him with this kind of authority. Bucky frowns—sees the intensity in her eyes, the way she's not winding him up for once. "What—"

"You wanted this?" She's agitated, getting there in seconds; there's accusation in her eyes. "You did this on purpose?"

He's getting a lot of reactions to this he didn't expect today. "Yeah," he says, slow. "I—"

"Why?" she asks him. In four years, Bucky's never seen Laura plaintive like this. "Why would you _choose_ this? Do you know what you've done, you damnable fool? Throwing away your mortality like this?"

Bucky opens his mouth, then shuts it again. Out of everyone he knows, Laura alone has never fought his decision to let the serum run its course. It's been a year since she's known he was having trouble, and never once has she argued against his judgment. They've always understood each other, Laura and him; it's part of why he trusts her with his restaurant so much of the time. They've operated this haven for outcasts successfully for years with the shared understanding that some people don't get a choice in what fights they're thrown into. She, Laura, didn't get a choice. Until now, neither did he. 

And yet somehow, he didn't account for all five-foot-nothing of Laura Kinney to ambush him on why, after being forced into the fight for the last thirty years, he would choose to throw himself back into it again.

There's a lot here he didn't account for. Bucky doesn't even have an answer. He turns his prosthetic over gently where she grasps at it and grabs her wrist right back. "I had to give up something," he tells her, careful. God knows he's awful at this, but at least he can try to do better with a kid who looks up to him than he managed with Steve. "I had to choose something."

"No you didn't."

"I did the math," Bucky says. "Laura, if I'd done nothing…" He shakes his head, shrugs. "This was the lesser cost."

"You say that now." She pulls her hand away, lips thin. "So will you live forever now? Or were you so blinded by something so temporary as love that you didn't bother to ask?"

Bucky watches Laura—the worry of her mouth, the wrinkle of her brow—and remembers she's barely nineteen. Nineteen years, of a possible thousand. Hell, at nineteen, Bucky himself was sleeping with women assuming it'd stick if he just tried hard enough. "It's not temporary," he explains. "With Steve, it's... never temporary. If we live forever…" He rubs at his eyes. "We'll do it together. God, y'know—maybe this makes me fucked up in about six hundred different ways, but that idea…" He pauses, rolls the words around in his mouth, tasting them for truth. "That was worth it. I took stock of my shit, Laura. And that, to me, turned out to be worth it."

He can tell Laura doesn't understand, but at the very least she seems reassured by the complexity of what he's done. She makes a point of staring at him blankly, as though making clear that she thinks he's a moron, until her eyes flick high toward something behind him.

Bucky turns in his seat. There stands Steve, still looking sorry. Bucky can't tell from his face how much he heard.

"I'm just," Steve begins, hands shoved in his pockets in humility. "I just... wanted to tell you I'm not here to make a scene, if that matters. Sam told me to shut up and listen, so I'm here to… shut up and listen. If you want."

Bucky keeps his stare hard, but—God help him—he finds Steve's awkward contrition endearing as ever. Even now, after sending him into a numb, mindless rage for hours, Steve still turns up and manages to seem like one of the best possible things on earth. 

Bucky turns to Laura, sighing hard. "Go," she says flatly, taking the coffee from him. "Lovesick fool. Be pathetic over there, I will run things."

Bucky floods with sudden fondness. "Thank you."

"I am not doing you a favour," she says. "This is why you pay me. To put up with your garbage." She punches him in the arm. "Soft," she says. She looks at Steve like he is a contagious disease. "You got soft since he got here."

"Sorry. Can't help it."

"Give me a raise."

"Okay."

Laura's eyebrows fly up. "Really?"

"This place is running ship shape, whether I'm around or not. Seems like you earned it."

She stares, giving him the side-eye. "Is this guilt for all of your bad decisions?"

"It's perspective. Take what you can get."

"Then I want a better title."

Bucky sets after Steve. "Fine," he says, patting protectively at his pocket.

Laura frowns at him like she's never seen him before. "Buy me more knives!" she calls.

"There's nothing wrong with the knives you have," he says over his shoulder, pausing to knock on Lonnie's table as he passes. "Do me a favour and sit at the front a while, would you? I gotta talk to this asshole."

"This is a public establishment," Lonnie says. "I'll sit where I please."

"Your friendly neighbourhood proprietor needs to have a personal conversation. I'd rather do it without being overheard."

"Then do it at home. I know you two are shacking up."

Bucky rolls his eyes and turns to him. "Just do it, would you?"

"You know I'll hear you anyway."

Bucky squints his annoyance. "Just give me the illusion of privacy! Pie on the house."

"Oh," Lonnie says, shambling to his feet, coffee in hand. "Well, if there's pie."

Bucky watches him go. "You'd think I was keeping him here," Bucky says, turning to Steve, but even Steve's smile still looks halfway devastated. In spite of everything—despite being angry with him and feeling like he's gotten lost in some fiasco he was supposed to have under control—Bucky looks at that stupid face and knows that this is something he wants to fix. He wants to be angry with Steve and Steve to be angry with him and he wants them to have it out and scream at each other and bear their damned open wounds and then to go home and find a way to make it better.

Forever. 

God help him. 

"So you came here to listen, huh?" Bucky asks, voice level. Steve raises his downcast face. His hands wrap around one of the diner's simple porcelain mugs, and sometimes, in moments like these, time seems to halt. How many times in the past century has he come home furious to find Steve sitting there, shoulders hunched, hands wrapped around whatever drink was supposed to bring him solace? It's him and it's them, foundational, fundamental. Sometimes it feels like their interlude two decades ago never happened, was never supposed to happen, just served as some strange dream where their roles reversed for just long enough to realize what the other one carries—but now, here, Steve slouching in contrition, Bucky's fury simmering into sympathy… this is right. This is how it's meant to be: Steve Rogers, furious until fragile; Bucky, looking his stupidity dead in the face and wanting only to pull him level.

Bucky's not angry anymore. So Steve's an idiot. It can't be helped. It's as inevitable as anything else about them. "Go ahead," Bucky tells him. "Ask me what you want to ask."

Steve stares a second, as though trying to see if he's laying a trap. His eyes are fire and ice, steely and steeled. "Why," he finally croaks, throwing caution to the wind, but his throat fails him in record time. He bows his head, grip tightening on the mug. "Why did you hide this from me? Why would you hide it, unless it—if it wasn't—"

"I'm gonna answer you," Bucky says, quiet. "But I don't know if you're gonna be glad I did." He raises his eyebrows, trying to impart a point. "I'm trying to communicate with you in advance, here. So that when I screw up again, you're not gonna fly off the handle. You get me?"

Steve searches his face and nods, solemn. "Okay," Bucky says. He leans hard over his arms on the table, takes a long second trying to compose his thoughts. "Okay—see, I'm already fucked. I don't—I don't have the slightest idea how—"

But, having made his case for patheticness well, Steve's fingers unwrap from along the mug's contour and reach for Bucky's hands where they're bunched in front of him. Far from helping, that makes it worse; Bucky suddenly feels shy for the first time this century. "God, I didn't want to do it like this. Okay, it—I don't know when it started. Sam's wedding, only, I guess it—" But he shakes his head. He hooks at Steve's fingers just to keep them still. "What I'm trying to say is, things with us have been..."

"Buck," Steve murmurs, inquiring.

"This isn't easy for me," Bucky says. "Do you get that? I just don't know how. That's why. That's the simplest fucking answer to your question. I don't know how to do this. Just shut up and let me try."

Steve opens his mouth, but then shuts it and nods, jaw setting. At least Sam fucking taught him something.

"Look," Bucky sighs. "Okay, it—here's how it happened. Monday after Sam's wedding, I went to Stark's lab. I had him explain things to me, run some tests. Tuesday I went back, ran some more tests, had a small procedure done to get some necrotic tissue removed, and I woke up Tuesday afternoon—already healed. Serum took like a charm. I asked for it. Stark gave it to me while I was out. Felt like there'd been no procedure at all. Another bunch of tests later and I was released with a full range of motion and a hell of an adrenaline kick, so I went straight from Stark's lab to the jewelry store, and I bought these." He pulls the rings from his pocket and slaps them down on the table.

At first, Steve's eyes seem not to register what he's looking at. It strikes him in staggered blows: emotion drains from his face, his eyes flitting to Bucky's, his lips parting slow without forming words. The bands are a simple silver, or at least Bucky's is; the other one's engraved with the kind of Celtic design Bucky remembers featured on the ring Sarah Rogers wore to her grave. 

"You never saw these," Bucky tells him. He swipes them off the table and puts them back in his pocket before Steve can get a decent look. "Gonna do this properly later, and you better act surprised."

Steve crosses his hands across his mouth, staring at Bucky in abject shock, before he slides them up to cover his face. Bucky gives him a second to hide, watching his emotion with gentle enrapture, before reaching to pull his hands back down again. 

"I didn't plan this out," Bucky murmurs. Steve, looking mortified, keeps trying to hide again, but when Bucky laughs and fights for his hands, Steve takes both of Bucky's instead and balls them up, wrapping his own hands around them, pressing his lips to his fingers in implicit apology and waiting for Bucky to say his piece. "I didn't know where to start," Bucky says, lowering his voice to keep the shake out of it. "I should've thought it through. I'm sorry. I got home that night and you'd fallen asleep with a book on your chest, and I didn't have the heart to wake you up just to fumble around the point. I swear to God, Steve, it must've been ten times since then I've opened my mouth to tell you, and I just kept losing my fucking nerve. I don't..." 

He cuts himself off; forces a steadying breath. "I just—these days I love you too damn much to function sometimes. You want to know if I did it because of you? Yeah, dumbass, I did it because of you. I did it for you, and because you came back. But it…" He shakes his head. "At the crux of it, it's much more because I kept looking at you across that goddamn reception hall at Sam's wedding and all I could think about was how much I wanted to make you permanent. How much I wanted to make this thing between us permanent. I look at you, and my priorities shift, so that's—" He licks his lips and looks up into those bright, burning eyes. "You're not a thing I can do without." 

He sinks his teeth into his lip, but Steve's all the more far gone; Bucky caves to the impulse to touch him, sliding a hand out from between Steve's, brushing away the tears that fall. "You can't keep going through life crying all the time," Bucky murmurs. Steve coughs a laugh. "There's a drought out west. You're too damn big. What's it take to rehydrate, a lake? Have some respect."

Steve looks at him and tries to get a grip on himself, but there are some things that find Steve where he lives. He'd muddled through the agonizing death of Sarah Rogers without shedding a tear only to heave with sobs when he had to sell her kitchen table to make rent. From the way Sam tells it, Steve had hunched over, rigid, when Carter died without making a sound, though he'd shed unstopping tears for hours. 

Now, Bucky sees something the same—not grief, but its contrast. Steve runs his hands slow down Bucky's arms and back up again, pushing his fingers under rolled-up sleeves. He grasps at his forearms right below the elbow, and holds him there. "I'm sorry I," he whispers, but his chin quakes hard enough to force him to quiet. 

Bucky reaches up and drags a palm against his cheeks again. It's all he can do. Eventually Steve grabs his hand and presses his mouth to it—reverent, repentant, devout.

"We find our way," Bucky mutters, and loves him. "We always find our way, you and me."

Steve nods. Emotion, that pesky contagion, spreads between them again; Bucky clears his throat free of it. "Don't get excited," he mutters, conspiratorial. "I'm not spending money on this thing. I don't want a ceremony, don't want anything like what Sam had. I just want for you and me to head to City Hall some Tuesday afternoon and sign our documents as efficiently as possible, and then I want to go to Happy's and pretend to get drunk with people we like. I just want—" the sentence breaks—"to finally have this shit on paper, around a hundred years to the day after we picked this thing up. If you're fine with that kind of timing."

That just serves to set Steve off again. Bucky clenches his jaw and fights to get through the rest. "The universe doesn't get a say anymore," he says as Steve recaptures his hands. "I want it to be so hard for any cosmic bullshit to split us up again that we have contracts to back us up. I want this shit to be ironclad, Steve. I want it to be legally fucking binding. I dare the universe to come break up a bona fide marriage; fuck it, it won't happen, I'm calling it now." Steve manages a breaking laugh. "We cracked it, Rogers. This is the best idea I've ever had."

Steve shakes his head at him, finally reaching for a napkin from the dispenser. "So this is really about spite," he rasps, accusing.

"Well, yeah," Bucky says with half a shrug. "What else is there?"

His eyes might be bloodshot, but Steve manages to get enough of a grip on himself to at least stop leaking. "Seems like kind of extreme measures," he says, but when the retort gets caught partway he just looks at Bucky and shrugs instead.

Bucky brings Steve's hand up to his lips and holds it there, enamored. "You're stuck with me now," he tells him, matter-of-fact. "Twenty years, easy. You up for that?"

Steve shuts his eyes. For a second Bucky thinks he's overcome again, but he resurfaces soon enough, smiling in some indescribable way. "I think I can handle it," he croaks, and then he bunches a hand in the front of Bucky's shirt and pulls him to standing, leaning over the table to meet him halfway. 

Steve kisses him, good and soft, and Bucky tucks his fingers under Steve's where they're splain against the table. He wends them together, letting Steve kiss him with the kind of slow intention that makes him weak in the knees, and they're in his restaurant and in plain view of the street, but for once Bucky doesn't care. Let the fuckers throw at him whatever they want.

"I should warn you," Steve says, mouth against his. "You're marrying a real asshole."

Bucky smiles, broad, and then drags Steve out of the booth. Steve steps close without a second's hesitation, right in Bucky's space, one hand sliding under his shirt and against his back. "Well, pal," Bucky says, "I hate to break it to you, but so are you"—and Steve buries his free hand in Bucky's tied-back hair and kisses him, slow, intensifying to deep, and that feeling settles—fills the spaces, finds every vacant cranny and nook, until Bucky forgets where they are.

"Hey Casanova," calls a voice from across the room. "Get a room!"

Well. He can never _completely_ forget.

Bucky drags back slow, setting his brow against Steve's. "Lonnie!" he shouts back. "Mind your own damn business!"

"You're making it my business! Kids eat here! Hell, _I_ eat here!"

"You can't see shit about what we're doing!"

"I can hear plenty!"

Bucky closes his eyes, gives himself over to another second enveloped with Steve—and then he finally disengages, nodding Steve toward the door. "Let's get out of here, huh?"

"Please," Steve says, looking suddenly tired, and Bucky ducks into the back to get his hoodie and nudges Laura on the way. "You good here?"

"Sí," she says, not looking up from where she's polishing her claws. "You never let me leave. I am stuck here day and night, but you come and you go as you please."

"I pay you to be here," Bucky says, re-emerging. 

"It's fine. Go have your intercourse."

Bucky stops and squints at her, ultimately spearheading only the more egregious offense. "Don't clean those in my restaurant."

"You are making time in your restaurant," she says, not looking up from her task. "I am maintaining hygiene."

"I'm not making time, and you're not—" He shuts his eyes and turns away. "Okay. You know what? I don't care. Do what you want."

She perks up. "Really?"

" _No._ Fabio's in at ten."

"I don't get a break for four whole hours?"

"Bye, Laura," Bucky says loudly.

"Vanish, softboy," she says in reply; and, Steve risking his life with a parting wave, they disappear into the night with Lonnie's laughter echoing hard behind them.

  


  


  


"This what you wanted?" Bucky mutters. He stills his hips. Steve hates that, Bucky knows he does; Steve wants him to move and never stop. But Bucky's hilt-deep, pressing Steve's face down into the bed with a hand in his hair, so there's not far to go.

Steve knows it. His fingers splay so pretty in the sheets. 

"Serum fucks you good, doesn't it?" Bucky says, rocking his hips.

"Ah," Steve says, once he figures out Bucky expects an answer. "I, ah— _ah_ —"

And that's good enough; it's all Bucky can stand. He cuts Steve off with the slow withdrawal of his hips, scanning a hand up Steve's back from the base of his spine. Steve's moan stretches and then disappears as Bucky leans, whole and affectionate, right between his shoulderblades—and pushes _in._

Steve groans, low and long, adjusting to the angle of Bucky's hips. Bucky slides his hand up further to the nape of his neck and grips there, hard, leaning his body right over him, pressing kisses against Steve's back until Steve bends for him just how he likes. He lets his mouth linger, long and open, feeling the slow, steady stutter of Steve's breath in his chest—and he feels it. He feels every second of it, feels Steve bend beneath him and lets himself _yearn._

"You ready for another twenty years of this, Rogers?" Bucky mutters at his spine. He loves him, God, he loves him; he presses his brow to Steve's skin and takes him careful, so slow.

" _God,_ " Steve gasps, canting his hips to find traction; then, seeming to find his voice under everything—"Don't jinx it."

Bucky gives a breaking laugh, his breath feathering across Steve's back. Then he pumps his hips, legs seeking leverage around Steve's knees, and fucks him at a deeper angle, reveling in the way Steve's hands scrabble in the sheets. "God, I love you," Bucky murmurs at his skin, "I love you so goddamned much"—and Steve's reply is a song of desire, giving inchoate sounds with every drag of his hips. 

They're in no rush. Bucky takes his time. 

After all these years—finally—they have all the time in the world.

  


**Author's Note:**

> There's a fumbly implication here that, despite the established lore in this universe that the serum is alive and therefore prone to dying, the serum might last forever and make Bucky immortal. I wanted those to be part of the stakes, and I hope to get into the """science""" (lol) behind that in the future. That "science" didn't fit in this fic, so I removed it, but trust me that the uncertainty is based in ideas and isn't just inconsistent.
> 
> Thanks for hanging in there with the last chapter. I wound up rewriting it entirely, by accident? It's done now. I'm not remotely done in this world, though, so stay tuned for more if you wish. ♥


End file.
